Barrett’s killing weighed on Lupo, more than he expected. The woman had despised him. But she wouldn’t have been killed in such a horrific way if she hadn’t been obsessed with proving Nick Lupo was crooked. Or something. It was hard to say what she’d wanted to do, other than just take him down. For its own sake, he guessed.
So it wasn’t his fault she’d fallen from the hands of a serial killer into those of other werewolves, but she wouldn’t have been in that position if Nick Lupo had never entered her life. It was an old story.
Fuck.
When the thought process started, it went on no matter how he tried to shut it down. Dark thoughts always acted with impunity when it came to his conscience.
He drove home, hoping for a few hours’ untroubled sleep, but feeling as though more tortured ghosts were swirling around his head. There was only one person who could chase them away.
Good night, Jess.
CHARLIE BLACK BEAR
He had been thinking, and he had changed his mind. He dialed the number they had given him. It rang once.
“Yes.”
“Uh, look, I need to talk to someone—”
“You can talk to me.” The voice was still quiet but now radiated command. “What do you want? We don’t have any of the tests ready for you.”
“That’s the thing,” Charlie said, looking at his office walls and not seeing them. “I’m calling because I’m out. I’m not in a position to give you anything anymore. The deal’s off.”
The voice chuckled mirthlessly. “Charlie Black Bear, you are trying my patience, and we’ve only been on this call thirty seconds.”
Charlie sighed. “Look, you guys came to me. I didn’t ask you for anything. You—”
“Hold on, Mr. Bear.”
Charlie waited, hoping to finish the call before someone knocked on his door and interrupted him. The phone in his pocket buzzed and vibrated. His personal phone.
The voice in his ear said: “Mr. Bear? You have a text message.”
There was a note of slightly more authentic amusement in that steely voice.
“Uh, yes, but—”
“Check your message. Now.”
Charlie felt the blood in his extremities turn suddenly chill. He reached into his pocket and slid out the phone as if it were a snake. Unlocked it and checked the screen. Unrecognized number.
There was no text, but there was an attached photo.
Charlie Black Bear half-stood, but his feet wouldn’t move and he hunched over his desk as his strength failed him momentarily.
The photo was of his wife and daughter, standing in their driveway, in his driveway. They weren’t aware of the camera – and seemed to be engaged in conversation.
What made Charlie’s breath catch was the fact that the photo was clear and vivid except for a small blur, his youngest daughter moving her hand. And they were wearing the same clothes he'd seen them wearing that morning.
“Mr. Bear,” said the voice in his ear. He looked at his office land-line receiver as if it was the first he’d ever seen. About to turn into a rattlesnake. “Mr. Bear, your wife and daughter – both very lovely, by the way – will be very disappointed if you don’t follow your instructions.”
Charlie couldn’t speak.
“Mr. Bear, do you understand?”
He gritted his teeth and felt the pain grind through his head and jaw. A rushing sound grew in his ears. Vision really can turn red, he mused almost dispassionately.
“Mr. Bear!”
“I get you. I got it.” Gritted teeth, hurting his skull. The red gauze curtain still in place across his field of vision.
“Yes?” A chuckle.
“I’ll wait for your call.”
“Yes, you will.”
JESSIE
She used her key and quietly entered Nick’s large East Side apartment. Few people knew that when the building had gone condo some years before, Lupo had bought the vacant apartment next door and had an arch built between the two spaces, which now gave him four bedrooms and a redundant kitchen he’d remodeled as an isolation cell in case he had to ride out a full moon at home. Even though his control over the Creature had increased greatly, the nights of the full moon could still kick his ass, as he put it, wreaking havoc on his life. And then he was a danger to everyone, including her. Maybe someday that would change, but for now it was a fact of their relationship neither wanted to address.
As soon as she was inside, she picked up the heavy scent of musk. It hit her nostrils hard.
The Creature.
He’d been out. And now… was he back from the hunt?
The door across from her opened and in the half-light seeping in from the tall reinforced windows and from the blue flame from the gas fireplace, she saw Nick watching her. His eyes worked better than hers in the dimness, but as he approached she saw enough to know he was naked. And very happy to see her.
Even in the shadows, his muscled body was visible enough that she felt warmth cross her features. Her cheeks burned and her ache for him increased.
“Nick,” she began.
“Jess, I— ” He began, simultaneously.
They chuckled.
“You first,” he said.
His voice had that gravelly post-Change quality. It made her tingle in all the right places.
“I had to get away,” she explained. “I thought if I called, you’d convince me not to drive down this late.”
She sensed a wave of musk overtaking her. Even across the floor, all the way around the leather sofa and armchair, she could feel his desire and hers mingling.
“I'm not so sure I would have told you not to drive down,” he said. “But I’m on a case – a weird one – and I had to let It out to run. To hunt.”
“And now?”
“Grabbing a few hours’ sleep. An early start.”
He stepped closer, almost ghostly quiet on the hardwood floors.
“Did you feel me coming?” she said.
“No, but I plan to,” he whispered, smiling gently in the shadows.
She chuckled, but her mouth had gone dry.
Suddenly they were face to face and she had little memory of how that had happened, but she reached out and lay her hand on his chest and felt the coarse hair and the familiar shiver cascaded down her spine.
Her hand caressed his warm skin and traveled downward, and she found him there. Large and waiting.
“Ooooh, Mr. Lupo, what big—”
He didn’t let her finish. He swept her up in his embrace and their lips mashed together in the perfect fit of well-accustomed lovers. She felt his rigid flesh straining toward her, brushing her thigh. His eyes seemed to glow into hers as they tasted each other.
She fantasized she could see the Creature crouching way back there, far back in his eyes, watching her. Maybe not so far back… It made the heat between them sizzle all the more. His eyes were doing their shift from color to color, rolling from brown to green and back again so they seemed to shimmer in the light from the fireplace.
She let him guide her down to the sofa, shedding clothes as their lips melted together and their tongues danced around each other's.
This part of their relationship had never waned, never faltered, and despite the challenges they'd been handed by circumstances, she knew it would take a major rift to break them apart. On the other hand, she knew that major rifts were more possible now in the world they lived in. She put the thought out of her mind, which was occupied with the soft spread of lust rapidly turning to pleasure, the warming of her flesh and tingling of her limbs.
Half-naked now, she opened up to him and when he took her, the intensity of his desire was almost overwhelming. He thrust into her with the longing of a lonely man who has given up on the possibility of companionship. She felt him reach deeply into her and went with him, letting him give of himself until their flesh united like molten rock flowing into a vessel. His hungry mouth found her nipples, tongue swirling around first one and then the other, and she
felt herself climbing the slope that would lead to her release.
Just then he withdrew, leaving her so inexplicably empty that she gasped. Then they switched positions, she sensing his need – and her own – for him to thrust into her from behind, so he could reach even deeper. On her elbows and knees, with him behind her, his rough but gentle hands caressed her breasts and he leaned over her back so his mouth could meet hers when she tilted her head to the side.
And as their furious rhythm increased, the heat spreading from body to body even as their lips and tongues continued to meld together, Jessie had the fleeting thought that she was glad she’d made the atypical evening trip after all. Sweat poured off their skin, seemed to boil and evaporate. She groaned as the friction and the pleasure grew nearly unbearable as he coaxed her to the plateau, and then they were over. There was only the warmth of their connection, as they slowed their pace and she stared into his intense and mysterious eyes, and then nothing else at all.
THE ARCHER
His aunt wasn’t a blood relation. She’d been his foster mom after… after they’d turned him away. After he’d been ground up, from one system to another even less forgiving one, ground up and spit out, and then all over again. He’d gone through six foster families before reaching Rose Billings and her family, and while Rose herself was a fairly decent foster parent, her three natural sons terrified him until...
Until it had happened.
Maybe he'd snapped.
He remembered it well, and sometimes he wallowed willingly in how good it made him feel. How he had resolved that particular problem. Sometimes he could close his eyes and relive it, and he would be able to smile.
Randy was the middle Billings boy, a cunning-eyed little bastard with a knack for causing trouble he then invariably blamed on… others. Whoever was around. The Archer caught hell from Rose or her alcoholic second husband (another real asshole, that one, whose mean streak was a mile wide) a hundred times for something he hadn’t done.
An ink spill on a new sofa?
Grass burned by spilled gasoline?
A bicycle wheel bent into a pretzel shape?
A neighbor’s pet dog accidentally killed by rat poison?
These and many more were all brought to you by Randy, but someone else had paid the price. All for Randy's amusement, the need for which seemed infinite and perverse.
And though Rose was indeed decent, as foster parents went, she despised rule-breakers, and she never saw that Randy and occasionally his accomplice brothers were the culprits. Their cons were well-imagined and well-executed, so when she looked for the source of the problem, it was always him she saw. Her blinders caused the one foster child so much pain, so much trouble he hadn't sought. Her punishments were arcane and tended to last days – days without this privilege or that toy, days with an added burden of endless chores, days made longer and more intolerable because they gave Randy and his willing minions more opportunity to needle, sabotage, and torture. And they took the opportunity, time after time, until Rose Billings never saw anyone but him as the problem in any scenario.
So the boy who would become the Archer had tasted the sharp end of one of the wide leather belts handed down by the long-gone first husband. Sometimes Rose Billings herself, sometimes her soused partner, a useless sack of pus as the young Archer thought of him, would wield the punishing whip with equal gusto.
And the foster child had suffered for those sadistic Billings bastards, until the day he snapped – or whatever it was that happened – and when he and Randy were the only ones standing at the flattened top of the bluff overlooking a narrow bend in the Fox River, way behind the sprawling Billings homestead, he had shoved Randy over the edge and listened with glee as the kid’s ragged scream was cut short.
Then the Archer had followed, scrambling down the gravelly zig-zag path until he’d reached the devil boy, whose neck was at an acute angle where he lay cradled by a thorny bush that had broken his fall somewhat. But not enough, definitely not enough.
Ah yes, the Archer-to-be had chuckled at the wonder of it all. The reversal of fortune had been immediate, if not exactly premeditated. He wiped bits of gravel embedded in the seat of his pants, breathless with suppressed joy.
And then the devil boy opened his eyes and stared at him, unable to speak, his crazed gaze pleading.
And the Archer remembered all the trouble, all the pain, all the humiliation he’d suffered at Randy’s hands, all the punishment, all the missed suppers, all the whippings with that damned belt…
And he’d stepped up to where Randy lay upside-down and put his hands on the injured boy’s neck and twisted, hard, until he heard the badly damaged spine snap under his calloused fingers.
He’d stared at those frozen, accusing, shocked eyes for a long time, as if waiting for a blink that would never come, then he had made his way home to build the alibi that would make Randy’s fate a complete and terrible accident.
Turnabout can be fair play, sure enough.
And now Aunt Rose herself was in the basement, stuffed into that old-fashioned steamer trunk she’d dragged around with her for some unknown reason. The belt he’d been punished with had come from that trunk. Maybe her dead husband’s clothes were stored in it, along with the alcoholic’s who had also apparently succumbed to something. The homestead had been sold, the house torn down. When he’d tracked her down here in Milwaukee, to a tiny, long-unpainted and run-down bungalow on the south side, she was living the life of an old lady. Watching ancient television series, reading prim and proper romances, doing word puzzles, and feeding a yappy rat-like dog. The yappy dog rested in peace right on her body, now, the two forever entwined. Their loose broken necks identical. It felt right, like a cycle completed.
The Archer was born.
Like a superhero.
This was his origin story.
Tonight he had flipped on Rose’s television and waited for the news at 10:00, and sure enough there was another live report from the casino.
He felt the thrill of knowing the news-chick, the hot-looking brunette, was talking about what he had done. There was footage of the casino, an establishing shot, and then they’d managed to get some video of the scene itself. The cops swarmed around it, so the Archer couldn’t see Tanya’s body, and they wouldn’t have shown it anyway. The hot reporter was melodramatic. The anchor in the studio, a handsome Latino man with short hair gelled straight up, made the obligatory terrified and shocked face: That this could happen in our city! Imagine!
He tried to eyeball the cops who stood nearby, but it was hard because the video was choppy. A couple guys in leather, including the big cop who'd talked to the reporter and a guy in a three-quarter length dark wool coat, a bunch of uniformed cops, and a small cluster of crime scene guys like on the CSI shows. A few cars drove past slowly, waved around the scene by uniformed cops who stared into their windshields.
They kept the report short to avoid sickening their audience, but they did mention that an arrow was the cause of death.
Then in a sublime moment, the hot reporter used her sweet lips to give him his nickname.
“The police are following up several leads, but until this killer is caught, all we can do is wonder whether the Archer will kill again.” She stared straight at the camera and nodded gravely, as if agreeing with herself. “Ashley Johnson, live at the scene of this gruesome murder.”
The Archer.
It was bullshit ratings game-playing, but they were the first on the air, and their name for him would probably stick. Nobody but him would care that he hadn’t actually used a traditional bow.
He thought about it, tasting it like an ice cream flavor. He liked it.
“Aunt Rose, you would have liked it. You’d be proud of me. You always said, tell people how you really feel.”
He snickered.
LUPO
They were stretched out on the sofa, curled into each other’s embrace so their slick bodies dried together by the blue-tinted light of the gas f
ireplace.
He was still nuzzling her neck, granting her tiny kisses. The musk of their lovemaking still enveloped them. Jessie’s hand was in Lupo’s hair, combing it with her fingers.
They wound down, enjoying each other’s touch.
“Tell me about this weird case you mentioned,” she said after a while.
“Why worry about it?” he mumbled. “Let’s just enjoy the moment.”
“I’m all for that,” she said, “but as soon as you said weird, my radar went off. Seems like everything has turned weird lately.”
“Well, that’s true.”
It was an understatement, and they both knew it. As soon as it became obvious that Nick Lupo was not the only werewolf in the world, everything had changed. He’d thought he was, only because he considered that in most ways it had ruined his life. He had looked upon it as a serious illness. A condition. His father’s odd behavior at the time of his friend Andy Corrazza’s fateful bite – that had stayed with him. Looking back, he wondered if his father had known more than he let on. He’d had a shotgun loaded with silver slugs, hadn’t he?
Had his father known about werewolves?
Come to think of it, why would I have thought there would be only one werewolf?
Even Jessie had warned him – with two other examples of people infected by the werewolf disease (Andy the neighbor boy and the young guy from up north who had infected him), the implication was that others could also have been infected. Let alone born that way, as some of the Wolfpaw mercenaries appeared to have been. But for so many years, he hadn’t encountered any evidence of other lycanthropy victims – he had always considered himself a victim – and so the Wolfpaw assholes had blindsided him and fucked up his world.
Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) Page 5
