Dead Man Stalking

by TA Moore

  A big man, head shaved down to an elf-locked mohawk and the sides tattooed like torn flesh, tackled Took from the side. They crashed into a table, and it collapsed under them in a welter of splintered wood and broken glass.

  Someone laughed—a cackle of sound more like a hyena than a wolf—as Took went down. A clumsy roundhouse punch caught Took a glancing blow on the head. He squinted through the static blur that rattled his brain and drove his knee up between the man’s legs.

  Bone cracked and a small, horrified sound squeezed out of the man’s throat. Something wet soaked Took’s leg—blood or piss. Some of them were human, Took remembered, but he didn’t have the luxury to discriminate.

  He got his elbow under the writhing man’s shoulder and shoved him off, just in time to catch a foot to his ribs. The impact lifted him off the ground, and his ribs popped with that weird starburst pulse of pain and pressure. It felt like a safe assumption that whoever was on the other end of that foot wasn’t human. Took managed to hang on to his gun with numb fingers, but his arm wouldn’t cooperate when he tried to raise it.

  The woman put her boot to his shoulder and leaned down to sneer at him. “Not so tough when you’re up against someone as strong—”

  Took spat blood into her face. The dark liquid spackled over her eyes and dripped into her mouth as she recoiled in shock. His gun hand was still numb, but the other worked as he groped through the glass and wood for a chunk of something heavy. He came up with a chair leg, splintered where it had snapped off the seat.

  “Never was,” he said as he rammed it underhanded up into the meat of her leg. It wouldn’t slow her down as much as it would a vampire, who wouldn’t heal around wood, but the raw, wet wound gouged into her muscle would hinder her for a while. “Tough doesn’t win. Mean does.”

  She yelped in pain and lurched backward. The splintered stick of wood ripped the hole in her thigh wider as it pulled free. Took rolled over and scrambled to his feet, shook the buzz out of his ears, and broke for the door.

  The wolf with her throat half stitched back together lunged at him. He spun and shot her in the head this time. It wouldn’t kill her. Biters got silver as standard issue, but Took had grabbed his stand-in gear from VINE. The impact did knock her back on her ass and she sprawled there, out of commission until her brain rerouted around the pulped gray matter.

  He shouldered through two thugs who fumbled a grab at him. To his left he caught a glimpse of a vaguely familiar face in the crowd, a silver streak in dark hair longer than Gabriel would usually leave on his Hounds.

  Took put the pieces together a second too late to dodge as Grey, Gabriel’s best friend, whipping boy, and second-in-command, braced his ever-present sawed-off shotgun against his hip and fired. The spray of silver-mixed buckshot caught a few of the Hounds on the way through and human squeals of pain mixed with the whine of silver-touched wolves.

  The silver pellets caught Took as he twisted away from it. They ripped into his back in a rash of pain that spread and cramped through his muscles and caught his thigh. A couple punched through his throat, the scrape of poisoned pain like the world’s worst laryngitis, and peppered his side and stomach.

  He coughed up blood, clots of it sour as they burst on his tongue, and he felt the ping of metal shot against the back of his teeth. His knees cracked against the ground a second before his brain realized he was on the way down.

  “Wet-mouthed bastard,” Grey jeered. “This ain’t your hunting ground.”

  Two shells in a shotgun, Took reminded himself. He threw himself the rest of the way to the ground and felt the force of the blast cut through the air over his shoulders. If he hadn’t moved, that would have taken his head off.

  Not that it mattered.

  Gabriel used Took’s vest like a handle as he hauled him up off the dirty floorboards. Without much effort at all, he tossed him across the bar. Took’s back cracked against the door and he slid down onto the floor.

  “Tell me, Luke,” Gabriel growled as he stalked forward on bent-backward legs. No one would say he didn’t look like a werewolf now, seven and a half foot of slimy black fur and a bony, heavy head with high-set ears and a muzzle with too many teeth. Muscle bulged around his jaw, heavy enough to show the ridges through his skin, and anything human had bleached from his eyes to leave them as gold as coins. “How did you think this would end?”

  Like this? Maybe, Took supposed, if he was honest. Six months ago this would have been the perfect result, an out he could deny responsibility for. He hadn’t wanted to die, but he basically already had, so why not.

  Things had changed—not enough to fix everything, but the easy intimacy of a kiss across his knuckles was something—and yet he’d still walked in here.

  Took laughed wetly and spat out blood and chips of metal. He got his feet under him and pushed himself up the door. “Fuck if I know,” he admitted. “You?”

  A wolf’s face wasn’t meant to look rueful, but Gabriel still tried.

  “Like this,” he said as he padded forward on bare paws, his boots ragged leather strips around his ankles. His huge hand snapped out and closed around Took’s head, cupped around the side of his skull like it was almost affectionate. Sharp claws pressed in against Took’s neck, and Gabriel’s thumb dug in the soft skin under his jaw to force his mouth shut. It pushed his fangs back up into their sockets, which hurt like fuck. “Always like this, kid.”

  He started to squeeze.

  It wasn’t the pain that disoriented Took—although it pulsed black and static between his ears—so much as the sound of his skull as it creaked. He slid his free hand around behind his back and groped for the sheath on the back of his belt.

  Took’s knife, the one he supposed was either on Lawrence’s belt now or back in Philly, had spent his career clipped just under his spine. He’d used it to open plastic seals or jimmy locks. The only blood it had ever drawn was his own the time he tried to pry up a floorboard with it and slipped. He still made sure it was recoated with colloidal silver gel every time he went back to work.

  Hopefully whoever had dropped this kit off had been just as exacting.

  He slid the blade free, the weighted hilt tucked into his palm, and swung in a wide, vicious arc that cut across the underside of Gabriel’s arm. A spray of skunk-sour blood flicked across the wide, thick-haired chest and then across the underside of his muzzle. The end of the blade scraped over his jaw and flicked under the corner of his lips. It sliced the black flews up to his cheek and up toward his eye.

  Gabriel jerked his head back in time to avoid a patch. He snarled as the silver suspension worked its way down into his blood, the edges of the injury pale as the silver tried to undo the curse. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but he’d have that mark for a while.

  Blood and slabber splattered as Gabriel shook his head to dislodge the pain. His hand tightened and Took gagged as the claw under his chin pierced up into his mouth. He curled his tongue away from the scrape of it.

  “Was there a point to that?” Gabriel rasped as he plucked the knife out of Took’s suddenly nerveless hand. “Did you think this would kill me?”

  He flicked the knife away. Took gargled out a laugh around the talon.

  “If I could give up,” he said, “life’d be easier. Death would have been easier.”

  Gabriel snorted. “It’d have been over anyhow. I guess I get to fix that now,” he said. His fist tightened. “Goodbye.”

  The edges of Took’s vision squeezed into a black blur that faded until all he could see was Gabriel’s face. But he could still hear. The low growl of a heavy engine cut through the scrape of his bones as it approached.

  Took always took point, even if it made no sense, and Madoc saved the day. A flash of will pushed back the black rim of pressure in his skull.

  The matte-black bike, Harley engine under a road-bike paintwork, smashed through the window of the bar.

  “Son of a bitch,” someone yelped as the Hounds and their groupies staggered back from t
he broken glass and the dangerous spin of the bike’s tires as it skidded toward them.

  Madoc stepped off the bike as it fell, composed as though he’d just come through the front door, black on black, silver bright against his collar and across his chest. He smiled at Gabriel, no humor in the flash of sharp white fangs and bloody tongue.

  “Hounds. Last I heard you were in Montana,” he yelled across the bar. “That’s where I’ve had people looking.”

  Gabriel flexed his fingers around Took’s head. It would have been easy enough to end it there or make a good try at it, but instead he let go. Took had a half-formed plan on how to help Madoc, but good intentions weren’t enough to keep him on his feet.

  “Maybe he’s not so good at hide-and-seek, then,” Gabriel growled. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble.”

  One of the shifted wolves—built along the same lines as Gabriel but blond furred and not much taller than normal—swung a clawed paw at Madoc’s head. He swayed back and caught the wolf’s wrist before the blow connected. His fingers were pale against dark skin and tawny fur as he used the force the wolf had put into the punch to slam him down into the ground. The already scarred planks that floored the bar splintered further under impact. Madoc braced his boot in the wolf’s armpit and torqued the thick, shifted arm off at the shoulder.

  The shriek that came out of the wolf was high-pitched and shocked, the death squeal of a farm animal that had just realized it was food. Sudden, unexpected fear rippled out through the crowd as they watched the curse try to stitch the wolf’s body back together. It didn’t get a chance as Madoc pulled his personal 410-bore shotgun pistol out of the holster. His equipment came from the BITER quartermaster, and the saltpeter and silver shot punched the wolf’s skull into the floor.

  “I just followed the stench,” Madoc said as he dropped the arm. “Tell me, wolf, are you going to fight me or tuck tail and run away?”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Not my—”

  Before he could finish, Grey shoved to the front of the crowd. His face was only half-changed, bones sharp as they twisted under his skin and made him twitch, but his hands were still steady enough to jerk the shotgun up to his shoulder.

  “Think you scare us?” Grey sneered, as his fangs carved new homes in his gums. “Fancy coat, fancy title. You’re just another fucking wetmouth to us.”

  “It’s silver!” Took forced the warning out through his raw throat as Grey cocked his finger back.

  The blast cut through where Madoc stood, just as his body came apart like tattered smoke. Someone in the crowd was stupid enough to cheer. It was strangled to death in his throat as the smoke dragged itself back together, and Madoc stepped out of the dark wherever he went in front of Grey. He grabbed the end of the shotgun in one hand and punched it back into Grey’s face.

  “Fight it is,” Madoc purred.

  He spun and fired a shot into the gut of one of the human Hounds as the man lunged at him, stake clenched in one hand. The blast tumbled the man back in midair and threw him into the crowd behind him. By the time they recovered, Madoc had stepped away again.

  “Not what you had planned?” Took asked Gabriel as the big wolf snarled in frustration and watched Madoc take the bar apart.

  Sharp yellow eyes cut down and narrowed with a flash of mixed rage and humor. With Gabriel, everything was mixed with rage.

  “See?” Gabriel chewed the word between his fangs as he bent down to grab Took’s foot. His claws punched through the heel of Took’s boot as he dragged him away from the door. “You always thought you were so bright, boy, but you forget other people are too. This—give or take a few dead whelps—is exactly what I had planned. Or did you think I couldn’t smell that killer’s stink on you?”

  He winked a yellow eye as he dropped Took by the door. “And eat something, boy. You look like hell.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THEY HADN’T made Madoc a cardinal because of his pretty face or let him live after the Accord was signed because they had a choice. He was dangerous, well trained, and he liked to kill. Death had been with him all his life, and he’d gotten good at introducing it to others. And once he let the smoke out of his cage, he was death—or the closest thing anyone who didn’t sidestep the world to see what lived in the dark would get to it.

  Blood dripped from his hands as he let the smoke drag him through the shadows. On the other side, in the gray lands, it had gotten crowded. Birds strung together of bones, with tattered rags of wings, hopped and croaked as they mobbed him. He batted them aside easily enough, but they drew blood with their sharp beaks and dirty talons. Even Madoc could smell how sweet his blood stank here, like black perfume on the still air. It would draw worse than the scavengers.

  There were always worse things to draw here.

  Madoc snatched one of the creatures off his back and crushed it in his fist. His blood caught at him like hooks, bruised dark and tender under the skin like rot, and he had to lean in to stop it from pulling him away. It was always like walking into the wind here, but now it felt like a hurricane. Madoc dropped the bird to the ground. It squawked at him in offense, started to peck its bones back into shape, and then headed over to the silver-and-gray wolf that snarled over the barrel of a reloaded shotgun. Drool hung in thick strings from his lips, the black flews caught half-wrinkled as they peeled back.

  He had surprisingly pretty blue eyes—a shame he wouldn’t for much longer. Madoc pressed his gun against the creased patch of skin between those pretty eyes and let himself snap back to the solid world. His bones ached under his skin, the shadows worked down into the marrow, but it was done.

  The wolf’s eyes filled with shock, but before Madoc could pull the trigger, a big, heavy, furred hand closed around his wrist and yanked.

  Werewolves were fast, but not that fast, Madoc registered. He tucked the question away for later as he drew the heavy dagger on his thigh and laid the edge to the big wolf’s neck. They stared at each other, caught in a moment of mutual hurt, if not destruction.

  “I’ll be harder to kill than you think,” the wolf said. He sounded almost human, the words crisp as he wrapped the flat ribbon of its tongue around them. “And you ain’t here for me anyhow, right?”

  Madoc didn’t look at Took. He’d finally muzzled the injured rage at the discovery that Took thought he would ever have hurt him. It was still there, caught in his chest like rocks, but he’d netted the damn thing until… later, when he could be angry without ruin. Then he tracked Took here, the heady smell of his blood mixed in with the skunk and meat stench of the werewolves. Madoc didn’t know if he wanted to rage at the idiot, kiss him better, or some combination of the two. Whatever he decided, he didn’t intend for it to have an audience.

  “I’m not the dog warden,” Madoc said. “But mangy curs who attack a VINE agent need to be put down. That’s just for the public good.”

  The big wolf snarled at the insult but controlled itself. That was more impressive than the speech.

  “You aren’t my business either,” the wolf said. “So tell you what… we both just walk out of here? No hard feelings. No broken bones.”

  The silver-and-black wolf snarled as it stepped forward, the shotgun raised to butt against Madoc’s temple.

  “He killed our fucking people, Gabe,” he snarled. “Put him down now, while we have the chance. We’ll be fucking legends.”

  Gabe. Gabriel. The hand on the collar of his Hounds. That explained a lot—not everything, but a lot. This wasn’t just some werewolves who’d gotten cocky because vampires either avoided The Salt or were locked under it. Madoc smiled thinly.

  “Gabriel and his Hounds,” he said. “I know someone who’s been looking for you.”

  It was hard to read the expression on a dog’s face, but the urbane chuckle that rolled out of that massive barrel chest sounded amused. Hunt something long enough and it becomes a game, and Kit had been on the old werewolf’s trail for a long, long time. Since before he joined the Biters.

&
nbsp; “I’ve heard that,” Gabriel said. “But your wolf’s head isn’t here to slide the silver home, is he? So it’s your choice, cardinal. We’ll kill each other one day, but it doesn’t have to be tonight.”

  “If you think you can win, why offer?”

  Gabriel grinned, a wet gape of red mouth and white fangs. “I might win, but you’ll hurt me. I’m too busy to be laid up, and I’d end up with a dead second-in-command after he tried to kill me. You?”

  “Did you hurt him?”

  Gabriel didn’t need to ask who Madoc meant. “I was going to kill him,” he said. “I haven’t. Take that and walk. Or don’t.”

  After a moment, Madoc lifted the sword from Gabriel’s throat. There was a bare line shaved down to the skin just above his jugular.

  “I’ll just tell Kit you were here,” he said. An ordinary wolf he could take out, but Gabriel had a reputation and it wasn’t Madoc’s job to fight him. And he’d receive no thanks if he stole that from Kit.

  “Go on,” Gabriel encouraged as he slowly let go of Madoc’s hand. The possibility of betrayal kept them slow and careful as they stepped back from each other. “It’ll amuse me to think he’s scorching his ass off here while I’m in a Cali vineyard.”

  Madoc smiled thinly. “What, are you moonlighting as a watchdog now?”

  The silver and black snarled and lurched forward with a garbled “fuck you.” Gabriel scruffed him and—almost casually—tossed the six feet of heavy muscled monster toward the smashed window.

  “Tell Bennett he won’t get a pass again,” Gabriel said. “I’m not a sentimental man. And give Agent Kitaen my regards. I’m sorry I missed him in Casper.”

  He spun on one heavy paw and dropped onto all fours as he ran for the window and into the dark. Old habits made Madoc take a step after him, but howls broke out like music in the night. Gabriel had more backup.

  Madoc picked up the silver wolf’s dropped shotgun and broke it open. The homemade shells dropped out and hit the ground. He tossed it aside and glanced around the room. Someone whimpered on the floor, and there were people who could still breathe, but no one looked like they were about to get up.