Willie stopped breathing, groped for his inhaler, found it, dropped it, picked it up. The mouthpiece was slimy with humus. He cleaned it on his sleeve, shoved it in his mouth, took a hit, two, three, and finally his throat opened up again.
He glanced around, heard only the rain, saw nothing. He stepped forward toward the tower. Toward Roy Helander’s secret refuge.
The big double gate in the high chain-link fence had been padlocked for two years, but it was open tonight, and Urquhart drove straight through. Randi wondered if the gate had been opened for her father as well. She thought maybe it had.
Joe pulled up near one of the loading docks, in the shadow of the old brick slaughterhouse. The building gave them some shelter from the rain, but Randi still trembled in the cold as she climbed out. “Here?” she asked. “This is where you found him?”
Urquhart was staring off into the stockyard. It was a huge area, subdivided into a dozen pens along the railroad siding. There was a maze of chest-high fencing they called the “runs” between the slaughterhouse and the pens, to force the cows into a single line and herd them along inside, where a man in a blood-splattered apron waited with a hammer in his hand. “Here,” Joe said, without looking back at her.
There was a long silence. Somewhere far off, Randi thought she heard a faint, wild howl, but maybe that was just the wind and the rain. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked Joe.
“Ghosts?” The chief sounded distracted.
She shivered. “It’s like … I can feel him, Joe. Like he’s still here, after all this time, still watching over me.”
Joe Urquhart turned toward her. His face was wet with rain or maybe tears. “I watched over you,” he said. “He asked me to watch over you, and I did, I did my best.”
Randi heard a sound somewhere off in the night. She turned her head, frowning, listening. Tires crunched across gravel and she saw headlights outside the fence. Another car coming.
“You and your father, you’re a lot alike,” Joe said wearily. “Stubborn. Won’t listen to nobody. I took good care of you, didn’t I take good care of you? I got my own kids, you know, but you never wanted nothing, did you? So why the hell didn’t you listen to me?”
By then Randi knew. She wasn’t surprised. Somehow she felt as though she’d known for a long time. “There was only one phone call that night,” she said. “You were the one who phoned for backup, not Dad.”
Urquhart nodded. He was caught for a moment in the headlights of the oncoming car, and Randi saw the way his jaw trembled as he worked to get out the words. “Look in the glove box,” he said.
Randi opened the car door, sat on the edge of the seat, and did as he said. The glove compartment was unlocked. Inside was a bottle of aspirin, a tire pressure gauge, some maps, and a box of cartridges. Randi opened the box and poured some bullets out into her palm. They glimmered pale and cold in the car’s faint dome light. She left the box on the seat, climbed out, kicked the door shut. “My silver bullets,” she said. “I hadn’t expected them quite so soon.”
“Those are the ones Frank ordered made up, eighteen years ago,” Joe said. “After he was buried, I went by the gunsmith and picked them up. Like I said, you and him were a lot alike.”
The second car pulled to a stop, pinning her in its high beams. Randi threw a hand across her eyes against the glare. She heard a car door opening and closing.
Urquhart’s voice was anguished. “I told you to stay away from this thing, damn it. I told you! Don’t you understand? They own this city!”
“He’s right. You should have listened,” Rogoff said, as he stepped into the light.
Willie groped his way down the long dark hall with one hand on the wall, placing each foot carefully in front of the last. The stone was so thick that even the sound of the rain did not reach him. There was only the echo of his careful footsteps, and the rush of blood inside his ears. The silence within the Old House was profound and unnerving, and there was something about the walls that bothered him as well. It was cold, but the stones under his fingers were moist and curiously warm to the touch, and Willie was glad for the darkness.
Finally he reached the base of the tower, where shafts of dim light fell across crabbed, narrow stone steps that spiraled up and up and up. Willie began to climb. He counted the steps at first, but somewhere around two hundred he lost the count, and the rest was a grim ordeal that he endured in silence. More than once he thought of changing. He resisted the impulse.
His legs ached from the effort when he reached the top. He sat down on the steps for a moment, his back to a slick stone wall. He was breathing hard, but when he groped for his inhaler, it was gone. He’d probably lost it in the woods. He could feel his lungs constricting in panic, but there was no help for it.
Willie got up.
The room smelled of blood and urine and something else, a scent he did not place, but somehow it made him tremble. There was no roof. Willie realized that the rain had stopped while he’d been inside. He looked up as the clouds parted, and a pale white moon stared down.
And all around other moons shimmered into life, reflected in the tall empty mirrors that lined the chamber. They reflected the sky above and each other, moon after moon after moon, until the room swam in silvered moonlight and reflections of reflections of reflections.
Willie turned around in a slow circle and a dozen other Willies turned with him. The moonstruck mirrors were streaked with dried blood, and above them a ring of cruel iron hooks curved up from the stone walls. A human skin hung from one of them, twisting slowly in some wind he could not feel, and as the moonlight hit it, it seemed to writhe and change, from woman to wolf to woman, both and neither.
That was when Willie heard the footsteps on the stairs.
“The silver bullets were a bad idea,” Rogoff said. “We have a local ordinance here. The police get immediate notice any time someone places an order for custom ammunition. Your father made the same mistake. The pack takes a dim view of silver bullets.”
Randi felt strangely relieved. For a moment she’d been afraid that Willie had betrayed her, that he’d been one of them after all, and that thought had been like poison in her soul. Her fingers were still curled tight around a dozen of the bullets. She glanced down at them, so close and yet so far.
“Even if they’re still good, you’ll never get them loaded in time,” Rogoff said.
“You don’t need the bullets,” Urquhart told her. “He just wants to talk. They promised me, honey, no one needs to get hurt.”
Randi opened her hand. The bullets fell to the ground. She turned to Joe Urquhart. “You were my father’s best friend. He said you had more guts than any man he ever knew.”
“They don’t give you any choice,” Urquhart said. “I had kids of my own. They said if Roy Helander took the fall, no more kids would vanish, they promised they’d take care of it, but if we kept pressing, one of my kids would be the next to go. That’s how it works in this town. Everything would have been all right, but Frank just wouldn’t let it alone.”
“We only kill in self-defense,” Rogoff said. “There’s a sweetness to human flesh, yes, a power that’s undeniable, but it’s not worth the risk.”
“What about the children?” Randi said. “Did you kill them in self-defense too?”
“That was a long time ago,” Rogoff said.
Joe stood with his head downcast. He was beaten, Randi saw, and she realized that he’d been beaten for a long time. All those trophies on his walls, but somehow she knew that he had given up hunting forever on the night her father died. “It was his son,” Joe muttered quietly, in a voice full of shame. “Steven’s never been right in the head, everyone knows that, he was the one who killed the kids, ate them. It was horrible, Harmon told me so himself, but he still wasn’t going to let us have Steven. He said he’d … he’d control Steven’s … appetites … if we closed the case. He was good as his word too, he put Steven on medication, and it stopped, the murders stopped.”
/> She ought to hate Joe Urquhart, she realized, but instead she pitied him. After all this time, he still didn’t understand. “Joe, he lied. It was never Steven.”
“It was Steven,” Joe insisted, “it had to be, he’s insane. The rest of them … you can do business with them, Randi, listen to me now, you can talk to them.”
“Like you did,” she said. “Like Barry Schumacher.”
Urquhart nodded. “That’s right. They’re just like us, they got some crazies, but not all of them are bad. You can’t blame them for taking care of their own, we do the same thing, don’t we? Look at Mike here, he’s a good cop.”
“A good cop who’s going to change into a wolf in a minute or two and tear out my throat,” Randi said.
“Randi, honey, listen to me,” Urquhart said. “It doesn’t have to be like that. You can walk out of here, just say the word. I’ll get you onto the force, you can work with us, help us to … to keep the peace. Your father’s dead, you won’t bring him back, and the Helander boy, he deserved what he got, he was killing them, skinning them alive; it was self-defense. Steven is sick, he’s always been sick—”
Rogoff was watching her from beneath his tangle of black hair. “He still doesn’t get it,” she said. She turned back to Joe. “Steven is sicker than you think. Something is missing. Too inbred, maybe. Think about it. Anders and Rochmonts, Flambeauxes and Harmons, the four great founding families, all werewolves, marrying each other generation after generation to keep the lines pure, for how many centuries? They kept the lines pure all right. They bred themselves Steven. He didn’t kill those children. Roy Helander saw a wolf carry off his sister, and Steven can’t change into a wolf. He got the bloodlust, he got inhuman strength, he burns at the touch of silver, but that’s all. The last of the purebloods can’t work the change!”
“She’s right,” Rogoff said quietly.
“Why do you think you never found any remains?” Randi put in. “Steven didn’t kill those kids. His father carried them off, up to Blackstone.”
“The old man had some crazy idea that if Steven ate enough human flesh, it might fix him, make him whole,” Rogoff said.
“It didn’t work,” Randi said. She took Willie’s note out of her pocket, let the pages flutter to the ground. It was all there. She’d finished reading it before she’d gone down to meet Joe. Frank Wade’s little girl was nobody’s fool.
“It didn’t work,” Rogoff echoed, “but by then Jonathan had got the taste. Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.” He looked at Randi for a long time, as if he were weighing something. Then he began …
… to change. Sweet cold air filled his lungs, and his muscles and bones ran with fire as the transformation took hold. He’d shrugged out of pants and coat, and he heard the rest of his clothing ripping apart as his body writhed, his flesh ran like hot wax, and he reformed, born anew.
Now he could see and hear and smell. The tower room shimmered with moonlight, every detail clear and sharp as noon, and the night was alive with sound, the wind and the rain and the rustle of bats in the forest around them, and traffic sounds and sirens from the city beyond. He was alive and full of power, and something was coming up the steps. It climbed slowly, untiring, and its smells filled the air. The scent of blood hung all around it, and beneath he sensed an aftershave that masked an unwashed body, sweat and dried semen on its skin, a heavy tang of wood smoke in its hair, and under it all the scent of sickness, sweetly rotten as a grave.
Willie backed all the way across the room, staring at the arched door, the growl rising in his throat. He bared long yellowed teeth, and slaver ran between them.
Steven stopped in the doorway and looked at him. He was naked. The wolf’s hot red eyes met his cold blue ones, and it was hard to tell which were more inhuman. For a moment Willie thought that Steven didn’t quite comprehend. Until he smiled and reached for the skin that twisted above him, on an iron hook.
Willie leapt.
He took Steven high in the back and bore him down, with his hand still clutched around Zoe’s skin. For a second Willie had a clear shot at his throat, but he hesitated and the moment passed. Steven caught Willie’s foreleg in a pale scarred fist, and snapped it in half like a normal man might break a stick. The pain was excruciating. Then Steven was lifting him, flinging him away. He smashed up hard against one of the mirrors, and felt it shatter at the impact. Jagged shards of glass flew like knives, and one of them lanced through his side.
Willie rolled away; the glass spear broke under him, and he whimpered. Across the room, Steven was getting to his feet. He put out a hand to steady himself.
Willie scrambled up. His broken leg was knitting already, though it hurt when he put his weight on it. Glass fragments clawed inside him with every step. He could barely move. Some fucking werewolf he turned out to be.
Steven was adjusting his ghastly cloak, pulling flaps of skin down over his own face. The skin trade, Willie thought giddily, yeah, that was it, and in a moment Steven would use that damn flayed skin to do what he could never manage on his own, he would change, and then Willie would be meat.
Willie came at him, jaws gaping, but too slow. Steven’s foot pistoned down, caught him hard enough to take his breath away, pinned him to the floor. Willie tried to squirm free, but Steven was too strong. He was bearing down, crushing him. All of a sudden Willie remembered that dog, so many years ago.
Willie bent himself almost double and took a bite out of the back of Steven’s calf.
The blood filled his mouth, exploding inside him. Steven reeled back. Willie jumped up, darted forward, bit him again. This time he sank his teeth in good and held, worrying at the flesh. The pounding in his head was thunderous. He was full of power, he could feel it swelling within him. Suddenly he knew that he could tear Steven apart; he could taste the fine sweet flesh close to the bone, could hear the music of his screams, could imagine the way it would feel when he held him in his jaws and shook him like a rag doll and felt the life go out of him in a sudden giddy rush. It swept over him, and Willie bit and bit and bit again, ripping away chunks of meat, drunk on blood.
And then, dimly, he heard Steven screaming, screaming in a high shrill thin voice, a little boy’s voice. “No, Daddy,” he was whining, over and over again. “No, please, don’t bite me, Daddy, don’t bite me anymore.”
Willie let him go and backed away.
Steven sat on the floor, sobbing. He was bleeding like a sonofabitch. Pieces were missing from thigh, calf, shoulder, and foot. His legs were drenched in blood. Three fingers were gone off his right hand. His cheeks were slimy with gore.
Suddenly Willie was scared.
For a moment he didn’t understand. Steven was beaten, he could see that; he could rip out his throat or let him live, it didn’t matter, it was over. But something was wrong, something was terribly, sickeningly wrong. It felt as though the temperature had dropped a hundred degrees, and every hair on his body was prickling and standing on end. What the hell was going on? He growled low in his throat and backed away, toward the door, keeping a careful eye on Steven.
Steven giggled. “You’ll get it now,” he said. “You called it. You got blood on the mirrors. You called it back again.”
The room seemed to spin. Moonlight ran from mirror to mirror to mirror, dizzyingly. Or maybe it wasn’t moonlight.
Willie looked into the mirrors.
The reflections were gone. Willie, Steven, the moon, all gone. There was blood on the mirrors and they were full of fog, a silvery pale fog that shimmered as it moved.
Something was moving through the fog, sliding from mirror to mirror to mirror, around and around. Something hungry that wanted to get out.
He saw it, lost it, saw it again. It was in front of him, behind him, off to the side. It was a hound, gaunt and terrible; it was a snake, scaled and foul; it was a man, with eyes like pits and knives for its fingers. It wouldn’t hold still, every time he looked its shape seemed to change, and each shape was worse than the last,
more twisted and obscene. Everything about it was lean and cruel. Its fingers were sharp, so sharp, and he looked at them and felt their caress sliding beneath his skin, tingling along the nerves, pain and blood and fire trailing behind them. It was black, blacker than black, a black that drank all light forever, and it was all shining silver too. It was a nightmare that lived in a funhouse mirror, the thing that hunts the hunters.
He could feel the evil throbbing through the glass.
“Skinner,” Steven called.
The surface of the mirrors seemed to ripple and bulge, like a wave cresting on some quicksilver sea. The fog was thinning, Willie realized with sudden terror; he could see it clearer now, and he knew it could see him. And suddenly Willie Flambeaux knew what was happening, knew that when the fog cleared the mirrors wouldn’t be mirrors anymore; they’d be doors, doors, and the skinner would come …
… sliding forward, through the ruins of his clothing, slitted eyes glowing like embers from a muzzle black as coal. He was half again as large as Willie had been, his fur thick and black and shaggy, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth gleamed like ivory daggers.
Randi edged backward, along the side of the car. The knife was in her hand, moonlight running off the silver blade, but somehow it didn’t seem like very much. The huge black wolf advanced on her, his tongue lolling between his teeth, and she put her back up against the car door and braced herself for his leap.
Joe Urquhart stepped between them.
“No,” he said. “Not her too, you owe me, talk to her, give her a chance, I’ll make her see how it is.”
The wolf growled a warning.
Urquhart stood his ground, and all of a sudden he had his revolver out, and he was holding it in two shaky hands, drawing a bead. “Stop. I mean it. She didn’t have time to load the goddamned silver bullets, but I’ve had eighteen fucking years. I’m the fucking police chief in this fucking city, and you’re under arrest.”
Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle Page 124
