by Night, H. T.
“How do we get his attention?” Ethan asked.
“Why don’t you and brother rip off your shirts and start flexing,” I said. I knew it wasn’t the time for a joke, but we needed to break some tension. Just then, I saw a couple of his henchmen walk outside. “It looks like they know we’re here.”
The two men walked over to us. We were only separated by the caged fence. “May we help you?” the man said from behind the fence.
“I’m here to see Marcos. He’s probably expecting me.” I stared the man in his ugly bald face.
“Are you Kyro?”
“Yes.”
“Tommy-Kyro?” the guy confirmed.
“Just let him know, that Kyro and a few of his friends are here to meet with him.”
The men left for a couple of minutes. Then they returned and opened up the gate, I noticed they didn’t lock it once we entered through. They were obviously planning on us leaving quickly. The five of us went through the gate. The junkyard was exactly that, a junkyard. There was crap everywhere out front. I suspected that we would be taken to the back of the property. Where they kept the cages and living conditions, but to my surprise, Marcos, and about ten of his men, came from out back and met us in the front.
“What can I do you for, Kyro?” Marcos asked as he walked up, staring me down like a teenager ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.
“I’m going to keep this short, Marcos. Where’s Dave?”
“Where’s Dave?” he asked, mocking my question. “Did you lose your little friend?”
“He’s my friend,” I said firmly. “He was your acquaintance first,” I said. “He never showed up last night, and I thought I’d come by and see what you know.”
“I am not your ‘Dave’s keeper.’ Did you check his apartment?”
“Yep, it looks like you went in there and thrashed the joint.”
Marcos was quiet, and then broke his silence with a smile then followed by an awkward laugh.
“Let me get this straight. You think I know the whereabouts of your friend and I went to his apartment and turned it upside down?”
“Look, dude. Man up. Quit this going around in circles bullshit. Dave was under the impression that unless I fought on your behalf, you would kill him. Now he’s gone. So, in my book, you’re prime suspect number one. Don’t make me call out the Tandra police.”
He laughed at that. “And who are you, fucking Columbo? Even if I knew where your friend was, why would I tell you? And just who the fuck do you think you are to dictate these terms with your lame threats?”
“I’m ‘nobody,’” I said. “A ‘nobody’ who will rain a whole lot of hell on you. If you thought owing some thugs a few bucks, made you nervous, you haven’t tried being on my bad side. You wanna see MMA fighting? I can and will go MMA on your person if you don’t cough up Dave, safe and sound.”
I looked up and I knew we were up against the elements. It was going to be dark real soon. That would mean there would be the second full moon in which all the Carni in the junkyard would surely turn.
Marcos caught me looking at the sky, and he grinned. “Worried?” he asked.
“About?”
“About ‘turning,’ and not being in a safe place when the moon rises?”
“Do you see my friends next to me? As long as I’m with them, any place is a safe place,” I said, with about as much confidence as a man could possess.
“What do you expect to get from this meeting? Tommy Jensen?” Now he was calling me by my real name, my Tandra name. He knew I didn’t like that, from other werewolves.
“You tell me where Dave is and I might let you live,” I said.
“Let me live?” Marcos laughed. “No one knows where Dave is!” Marcos yelled out. “Unless you believe in the afterlife and maybe he’ll come back as a slug or a daffodil.”
I kept quiet, holding in a howl of grief as I saw the murder in his eyes. I looked at my guys and then looked at the sky. The sun was going down, and it would only be a matter of time until we would all start to change. I wasn’t leaving. Marcos smug face was enough to make me feel like I needed to throw up. Or kill Marcos.
“Did you kill him?” I asked softly. Dave was the keeper of werewolf history, for five hundred years. And he was a hell of a nice guy, too. I was attached to him. Very attached.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“So, he’s alive?” Again, I was talking extremely quietly.
“I wouldn’t waste my time on a second-rate werewolf like Dave. I had a couple of my boys camp out at his place, and wait for him to come home.”
Anger and disdain began to rise in my core. I was about to pounce on Marcos with reckless abandonment, but a strong smell came from behind me. It was a distinct smell that was filed into my memory bank. It was Maya’s unique smell that I only I knew. She was here, still smelling of sex with me. I was almost freaked out of my mind with fear of something happening to her. I backed up and turned my body around to not make it obvious that I was looking for someone else. I was looking in the opposite direction. There, across the street was Maya, sitting there in her parents’ car, all by herself, like she was waiting for a burger at a drive thru, yes, that nonchalant. Shit! What was she doing here? I turned around and looked at Marcos and made sure I didn’t tip my hand that my girl was across the street, watching in plain sight. “We are seconds away from the full moon,” I said to Marcos.
“Looks like we are,” Marcos said to me. Then everyone spread out, getting ready to battle. Marcos and I were having a good, old-fashioned standoff. Both of us knew that if we didn’t move, we would turn into werewolves right out here in the open. I glanced over at the gate, and saw that it was still unlocked and that was the last conscious thought I had.
The full moon had arrived.
* * *
I woke up and I was in a cage, a really nice cage, to be exact. It had a great tree in the middle with blankets, and pillows. There were slabs of raw meat in the corner on a plate—T-bone steaks—and my mouth was watering. “How in the hell did I get in here?”
I called out, “Hello?”
Then, from around the corner, Maya walked in, sipping on a cup of coffee that smelled like a Starbucks roast. Wherever, I was, she was here, too. She had a few scratches on her arm, claw marks. But she was looking well.
“Where are we?” I asked. I turned and peed behind a tree that had been planted inside the cage. By now, she knew my drill, too. Wake up and pee like a racehorse. Get let out of the cage.
“We’re in Marcos’s luxury cages,” Maya said.
“Who is we?” I asked.
“You and each one of your friends. You five survived,” Maya said with a big smile. My heart stabbed. Dave was not here. She would have told me if he was.
“Where are Marcos and his men?” I asked.
“None of them survived.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your five-pack killed all of them pretty easily.”
Whoa! Wow! I digested this news without remembering what had gone down.
Soon, I began hearing each of my friends call out from other cages that were apparently in other rooms.
“Come on,” she said. “Everybody wants to re-bond in their Carni forms.”
Maya let me out of my cage and one by one, we let out my friends from their cages. Each one of them were safe. My head was spinning because I had no idea what happened since moon rise last night.
“Where can we de-brief?” I asked Maya, who had had plenty of time to make herself familiar with the werewolf luxury kennel layout.
“I’ll show you,” she said, and we followed her like puppies, her perfume and fresh coffee like an allure that we all scented. She sashayed down a florescent lit hallway like the girly Tandra chick that she was.
There was a conference room at the front of the facility and my five friends and Maya all made our way over there to that room. She seated herself at the head of the conference table and motioned for us to
sit. I had to hand it to her, she had her moments where I admired the hell out of her. She was running the show this morning.
We all looked at each other confused because none of us knew what happened.
“Introductions, please,” Maya said to me, like she was running some kind of corporate meeting. I played nice. After all, she did let us all out of the cages. And was likely the person who led us in them.
“Maya, this is Eli, Evan, Steve, and Albert. My…pack.” Minus Dave. “Everyone, this is the love of my life, Maya, my beautiful Tandra. Apparently she is the only one that knows what happened.”
Evan and Eli had scratches and bruises all over their toned bodies. They looked as confused as I was.
“What happened, Maya?” I asked. All of us looked to Maya, very eager to learn what had happened.
Maya stood up in front of the five us men and began to speak: “First of all, as soon as you all turned, I noticed that T—Kyro, you were the alpha wolf, and I mean it was obvious to me that you were the leader of the pack. I got the idea that werewolves follow the alpha wolf because they trust him and I was right. I sort of herded the others behind you and you led them in a full-on pack assault.”
“You could have been killed in the fray, Maya. One of us could have turned on you instinctively, and hurt you. Bitten you.”
She paused. “They trusted the pack leader and I trusted you. None of you tried to hurt me because you led the pack away from me and straight toward the bad guys. You guys, the five of you, were like a well-oiled machine. When the full moon hit, it was like poetry. Marcos and his wolves were unorganized under his crappy leadership. Not you guys. You teamed up and isolated them from each other. You dismantled them, tore them apart in sprays of blood that arced twenty feet in the air. They had no chance against you guys. You were more vicious and lethal than a platoon with automatic weapons. You were a blur of teeth, claws, fur, mud and blood. You were the terminators. The victors. The assassins…”
“Let me get this straight,” Steve said. “We killed all of those guys?”
Maya was quiet and then said, “Yep.”
“Holy shit,” Albert said. “Where did they go?”
“They all disappeared when they died,” Maya said. “Vanished.”
We all had so many questions.
“After the battle, how the hell did you get five werewolves in the cages?”
“Well,” Maya said, with a grin, “I opened five cages and put special steaks in them, from the kennel fridge and then I found a control panel in the security booth that could play the sounds of…” her voice trailed off.
“Could play what sounds?” I asked Maya.
“A female werewolf’s seductive call, something between a howl and a whimper. I read their procedure manual and they had a protocol for recapturing any escaped male werewolves with this sound effect and special steaks in the cages. Steaks with a little bit of tranquilizer in them. And so I got them out of the freezer and microwaved them a bit. They were labeled just for this purpose, and I used them. First I lured you all into the kennel with the recorded sexy female wolf sound played through loudspeakers, and you ate the steaks that I left in each cage. Then, you all went nighty-night on your blankets from the Valium in the steaks, and I sneaked back in the kennel and locked you all up until dawn. It was a cinch.”
“Geez, Maya. Do you have that procedure manual?” I asked.
Maya patted her bulging shoulder purse. “Oh, that and more, boys. That and more.”
Albert said, “Thank you, Maya, for what you did. You risked your life last night to help us destroy Marcos’s pack.”
She smiled but only had eyes for me. And I for her. And then the moment broke when we heard a bunch of guys yelling to be let out on the other side of the kennel.
We went around and let others out of their cages, all of the werewolves who had paid money to Marcos to stay here. We looked and looked but there was no trace of Dave and no one had seen him. We asked everyone.
We told them that Marcos would no longer be running this place, but if they came back the following night, it should be fine because no one was watching the place. It looked like it was going to be a free for all. No credit cards required from now until someone caught wind of an unpaid electric bill or something and shut down the place. This bit of news, that everything was now free, eclipsed any perceived sentiment or loyalty that Marcos and his henchmen were killed. The place was now operating on…greed.
All of the other Carni guys in our five-pack went back with Albert in his truck. I decided to stay with Maya. I had more questions about what happened. There was something that she wasn’t telling us…I felt it deep in my werewolf instincts, that she was hiding something so important that it was imperative that I find out what it was.
To be continued in:
Loving Maya
Werewolf Love Story #4
Available now!
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BAD BLOOD
by J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson
and H.T. Night
Published by J.R. Rain at Smashwords.com
Copyright © 2011 by J.R. Rain
All rights reserved.
Bad Blood
Chapter One
Class was over.
I was making my way to my car in the dark, my backpack slung over my shoulder, when the girl came running up behind me. We had exited class together, junior year United States history, when I heard her fall into step behind me. I didn’t have to turn and look to know I was being followed. I didn’t even have to turn and look to know who it was, because I could smell her.
It was the new girl. Well, new as of two weeks ago. And she smelled of flowers and shampoo and clean clothing. She also smelled of curry, which is why I knew who she was, since most girls smelled of only flowers and shampoo.
I’ve always liked unique girls, as much as I can like anything.
I had just clicked my car door open, using the keyless remote, when I heard her footsteps pick up their pace. She was moving faster, coming up behind me. I heard breathing now—her breathing, and I might have heard something else, too. I might have heard, mixed with the sounds of cars starting and our classmates talking and laughing, I might have heard her heart beating.
And it seemed to be beating rapidly.
It should beat rapidly, I thought. Here be monsters.
My back was still to her as she stopped behind me. Her scent rushed before her, swirling around me like a dust devil, and I inhaled her deeply and spun around.
Her face was a little orange under the cheap streetlights. She had opened her mouth to speak, but instead she gasped. She hadn’t expected me to turn on her. Heck, maybe she even thought she had approached quietly.
Maybe she wasn’t sure she had wanted to talk to me. Maybe, just prior to my spinning around, she had decided to do the smart thing, turn herself around, and leave.
Maybe she had heard stories of me. Maybe she had heard that I was different from other students. That there was something odd about me.
I heard the stories, too. Mostly, of course, I overheard the whisperings behind my back. They didn’t know I could hear them. They thought they were being discreet. But I heard their harsh words. I heard their hateful stories. I heard them speak ill of me. I heard their laughter, but mostly I heard their fear.
I heard everything.
Her gasp hung in the air, much like her mouth hung open. She was a pretty girl. Long, blonde hair. Brown eyes impossibly round. She was small but curvy. She looked like a doll all grown up into its teen years.
“You are following me,” I said.
She closed her mouth. Some of the students spilling out into the parking lot watched us. In fact, most of the students were watching us. I ignored all of them. All of them, that is, except this new girl.
“Yes, sorry,” she said.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked. I turned and opened my car door. I tossed my backpack into the backseat.
“I don�
��t know,” she said.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” I said.
I heard her heartbeat clearly now. It thumped rapidly. It even seemed to labor a bit, which might mean she had some sort of heart condition, surprising for one so young. She looked once over her shoulder, and I could almost hear her thinking, although my hearing isn’t quite that good. She was thinking, and I would have bet good money on this, I can still leave now. Make up a good story, or even a bad one. Anything. Just leave. They call him a freak for a reason.
But she didn’t leave, and I knew why. Because they don’t just call me a freak.
They also call me Spider.
“You need help,” I said, draping an arm over my open car door, letting it support some of my weight.
She quit looking around and now she held my gaze, and as she did, her heartbeat steadied. She was no longer afraid. Then her eyes pooled with tears, but she did not look away even as the tears spilled out.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you have a ride home?” I asked. I’d learned to never trust tears.
“I walk.”
I motioned toward the passenger seat. “Get in,” I said, “And let’s talk.”
Chapter Two
Seattle at night is beautiful. Seattle at night with a beautiful girl is even better.
We drove in silence. My car is an old Mustang, not a classic, but old enough to give me problems. That night I had no problems with it. The windows were down as the cool air whipped through the interior. I glanced to my right once and saw the new girl was huddled in the center of the seat, hands in her lap, looking straight ahead. I sensed her fear, or at least trepidation. Serious trepidation. I’m good at sensing things. I’m good at sensing emotions in others. It’s a survival mechanism, one of many.
I think, probably, anyone could have read her emotions. She would have looked nervous to any observer. I don’t know how it works for other people, I only know how it goes for me.
