Wolf's Trap (The Nick Lupo Series Book 1)

by W. D. Gagliani

  The air had been sucked out of Nick’s world, and he couldn’t breathe at all.

  The men disappeared into the blackness of the shadowy backyard, their shouts drowned out by a long howl and a savage growl that raised the hair on Nick’s back.

  A ragged volley of shotgun blasts nearly knocked him to the ground, and then another ripped into the echo of the first. Nick could swear he heard a whimper, then a child’s voice, and then one of the men was crying loudly and the others murmured as they reloaded their weapons and stood in a circle Nick could now barely make out.

  He felt wetness on his skin and looked down. Blood had welled up from several deep gouges in the back of his hand and had begun dripping to the blacktop. The wounds throbbed in a steady rhythm of pain.

  Absentmindedly, he wiped the aching hand on his jeans and stuck it in his pocket.

  The men were returning now, walking slowly out of the shadows, shotguns held low and heads bowed.

  Frank Lupo glared at his son, who had disobeyed. Nick knew the look and prepared for the worst. Instead, the elder Lupo put his arm around his son’s shoulder, a strange enough gesture, and whispered words Nick almost didn’t catch.

  “Time for bed. Let the man grieve how he wants.” He muttered something else, a sentence or two Nick lost amid the new sounds from the backyard: a man, bawling and screaming, his Italian distorted by the night and by the low voices of the others who crossed themselves and dispersed without looking at him.

  Is Mr. Corrazza crying? Nick wanted to ask. But the moment for questions was past.

  Nick went to bed, wondering what the German shepherd had done, why the men had hunted it so viciously, ending its life with gunfire.

  His hand had stopped bleeding by then, so he never bothered to bandage it.

  The next day, news of Andy Corrazza’s death in a fatal hit-and-run accident wiped the bizarre dog hunt from his mind.

  Chapter Seven

  Lupo

  Lupo’s apartment was the same cluttered two-bedroom he had occupied since the Academy. There was little furniture besides overflowing bookcases and the occasional end table, buried in a layer of books and periodicals. Research, he called it when pressed. But then, he’d never be pressed again, would he, since Corinne had done much of that pressing in the last two years?

  He sat now and could almost see her standing in his doorway, a tiny smile playing over her face as she chided his housekeeping. He heard himself replying with a playful insult about her family values and saw her smile flicker at that, and then he was apologizing. She’d been serious for the next few minutes of her visit. A nonprofessional one, she would say around a wicked smile, and that had been two, no, three days ago. The last time he’d seen her. Until today.

  Now she was gone, her apartment across the hall sealed up and her body on a tilted metal slab downtown.

  And though she was just one less whore on the street for most people, his daily life could never be quite the same. He knew without a doubt that what he faced now would be that much harder to face because Corinne wouldn’t pop in with the timely insult or friendly ear.

  It was almost funny. He had resigned himself someday to hear her tell him that she had contracted AIDS, intelligent as she was and careful as she claimed to be. Still it was an occupational hazard. Though she was a hooker, Ben was incorrect in his assumption that this involved streetwalking. While she wasn’t quite an executive-level call girl yet, she’d been headed in that direction, working selectively for a relatively safe escort service known in the city for its “clean” approach to a dirty business. So her “encounters” tended to be in “safe” hotel rooms and the expansive, well-decorated bedrooms of sprawling north suburban mansions, rather than in cars, alleys, and ratty flophouses. Corinne had plans to invest her trick money into a degree. She’d mentioned her interest in law as a possibility, and Lupo had never felt the urge to point out the horrible Inside Edition cliché of an ex-call girl lawyer.

  Now she would never have her chance. The finality of it caught in his throat. Had he been asked a week before, he never would have imagined how her loss would affect him.

  His gaze slid over the huge rack of compact discs that nearly covered one wall. Over two thousand CDs, some classical, with a healthy scattering of movie soundtracks, experimental and electronic, plus so-called Classic rock—but mostly Progressive rock. It was his one vice, collecting obscure prog-rock concept albums recorded by long-gone bands such as Quill and Cathedral, nearly unknown bands such as Marillion, Pallas, and IQ, as well as more popular bands such as Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and the very band whose music had forged his friendship with Corinne—Genesis. She had heard him playing their latter-day output—his least favorite—and they’d started talking about their musical likes and dislikes. Corinne liked the more recent pop-heavy, pseudo-Motown hits influenced by vocalist-drummer Phil Collins, while Lupo savored the much older mythological and literary epics written by the youthful keyboardist Tony Banks and the outrageous early vocalist Peter Gabriel. But they had found common ground in the band’s middle period, when Collins had stepped from behind the drums to sing on the mid-seventies albums. The song “Entangled” had become a touchstone of sorts for them, with its six- and twelve-string guitars, synthesizer, and Mellotron blended to form a visual ballad of delicate beauty and subtle English humor. Lupo had played “Entangled” for her after a lengthy discussion about the merits of Gabriel versus Collins, and it caused them to reach a middle ground. They’d become friends then, even if she did think many of his CDs impenetrably dense and too musically challenging for the average listener. Which was why he liked them, he would argue. Then they’d order pizza and have a good laugh.

  Now he could barely stand to look at his prized collection. He gazed down at his cluttered desk, the abortive home office he had never quite managed to gather together. Stacks of loose papers teetered on the edge, propped by crooked piles of books and yellowing magazines.

  With a sudden motion, Lupo swept everything off the side of the desk and onto the already-cluttered floor. Then he swept the few remaining books and pens off the desk, clearing its surface. He cradled his head in his arms, but he could not maintain the position long. He could feel it coming again, and he pushed the chair away from the desk and let it wash over him.

  The smells! His nostrils cleared and the smells rushed into his head and made him giddy, swirling around his brain and then slowly settling into recognizable patterns of familiarity.

  Like the day’s earlier Change in the access tunnel, Lupo found himself more aware of these occurrences than ever before, more able to process the information as a human, rather than merely react to it as the Creature. He wondered briefly. What had changed in such a short time? But then his rage was building, and—for lack of a focus, perhaps, or because the rage was his focus—somehow the approaching Change seemed different.

  Why was he experiencing the Change in so many new ways? Why now, after all these years?

  The tingling drove his senses crazy. It began under the soles of his feet and in his palms, slowly spreading first outward to his fingers and toes and then inward, back toward his torso. And the smells, heightened to lancelike points that drove into his nostrils and exploded inside his brain in the shape of olfactory fireworks, the smells made him weep with their intensity and familiarity and—something else, something he could not, in the infancy of his awareness within the maze of the Creature’s mind, completely grasp. Something. As if the Creature itself were attempting to communicate with him, before—before the anger and rage and hurt gathered up into a single tangible emotion that began low in his stomach, and he knew he was about to go over, just like that, it’s a fact, Jack, and even though he tried to recall or deny or alter the feelings that had suddenly spilled over into rage, he also knew full well that he could not and that his precarious new balance between Man-that-was and Creature had been tipped and was already spinning him into the Change, spinning him inexorably and without remorse, spinning him l
ike a children’s cartoon into the gray-black form only once glimpsed in the videotape he had made in the woods just before the beast toppled the camera and howled off.

  He barely managed to shed the layer of clothing and scatter it about him, heedless now of his need to collect it later.

  How strange. I can sense Corinne. She’s still here. No, her smell is still here. Her scent. And here’s HIM—his smell is here, and the fourth thread, too. Stronger now than before.

  The words passed through the narrowing focus of his mind and were gone.

  Lupo fought hard to remain in control. He tried to exert some kind of pressure on whatever shape his brain was now taking and, for a second, he felt himself slipping back, or maybe both ways. For a brief moment he thought he’d won, feeling nearly in control of the Creature, but then he was over and no longer Nick Lupo.

  In only seconds, the transformation was complete.

  He lunged at the door and howled as his nose smacked soundly into the reinforced steel. Forepaws scrabbled uselessly against the smooth surface, claws tearing—the pain lanced through his heavily muscled body like a javelin. The blood scent turned strong and inviting for a second, until whatever vestige of his own brain that remained intact reminded him in a single, nearly incoherent thought, that it was his own blood and therefore unacceptable.

  He was there again, in the Creature—aware, though standing well back, like a separate consciousness.

  The huge gray-black form sat on its haunches and let out a strangled howl.

  His nerve endings tingled mercilessly now, as if insects had somehow crawled into his flesh and were digging tunnels around bone, along cartilage and sinew and between the cells themselves. Millions of tiny legs traversed organic highways and set him to scratching, though he looked at his forepaws for a moment and tried to decide—actually felt himself trying to decide—whether they could do the job on their own or whether he would have to enlist his rear paws, on which he now stood. Somehow, standing on the rear paws was something he had come to prefer over the years, even if he could in a second crouch on all fours and feel completely at home.

  All this Lupo knew as if it were contained in a distant memory, a visual one that seemed to grow brighter and closer with every breath, more comfortable with each passing moment but still somewhat jumbled and confused. Before, he’d known that he was working his way through a roundabout thought process, a process that only Caroline had ever been able to coax from him on a regular basis. Somehow, she had spoken to him through the haze of the Change and its side effects, and she had managed to instill in him the confidence to attempt the direct brain-to-limb communication that he himself had rarely completed successfully. But now, as of today, he felt success finally within his grasp.

  Even though the rage and other complex emotions within him had once again forced a Change, Lupo could feel himself gathering control over the Creature. Could feel himself consciously abandoning the reliance on instinct he had developed over the years, beginning instead to learn how to trust the instincts while still maintaining a presence, a Nick Lupo presence, that could impose its will on the actions of the Creature.

  His awareness flickered like a loosely connected television set, and he felt himself lose some of the control he thought he had gained. Lupo heard a soft whimper, his whimper, and knew that the beast still imposed some semblance of control.

  Now was a time for anger and fury, the beast seemed to say, and no soft voice could have coaxed anything but a vicious response from its jaws.

  The Creature lunged for the door before Lupo could bring to bear his own will, backstepping and lunging again and again, feeling the pain and frustration slide into one incurable ache. At the windows, then, but the glass was safely out of reach. Though his wiry paws could reach through the reinforced steel bars sideways, the bars were too narrowly set in their frame for him to reach the textured Plexiglas. A strategically positioned hedge along the side of the building hid the beast’s shadowy struggles from casual view, and indeed camouflaged Lupo’s “improvements” to the security of his apartment. But now the Creature wanted out, and Lupo’s feeble and flickering sliver of awareness could impose no physical control.

  Bloodlust struck the Creature like a sharp dagger—Lupo felt it, too—and it howled at the futility of searching for anything to quench its insatiable wantonness.

  After abandoning the windows, Lupo attacked the rest of the furniture, upending chairs and tilting end tables even as the rage crested and eventually dissipated, the scents playing in his nostrils and taunting the beast with their inaccessibility. The sliver of Lupo seemed to glow from the beast’s brain, gaining strength again as the beast tired and finally laid its head down onto its gigantic paws. Soon it slept, unsated, taking Lupo with it until the next time, his hope of learning more suddenly dashed.

  When Lupo awoke, painfully parched as always, he was lying on the floor, his bloody hands under his head. The steel door had held firm, with its seven custom-made locks, and the windows seemed intact as well, though bloody streaks marked the steel bars where it—no, dammit, where he—had tested his strength. This time, he had not managed to loosen any of the soundproof panels, so no neighbors would come knocking to ask him to control his dog.

  Nick cried for Corinne and for himself and his grotesque fate. Weakened by the episode, he remained in the secure chamber, knowing that his fragile state of mind could trigger another unwanted incident.

  He smacked a hand weakly on the linoleum.

  No matter how much progress Nick thought he was making, the Change knew no master except the Moon and his own soul’s unrest.

  Before he could will himself physically away from the place he approached, his memory dredged up familiar piano chords. “Mad Man Moon,” another Tony Banks composition. “Well,” she had said, “that would have to be your song, wouldn’t it?” She’d ducked his swat and stuck out her tongue. They had settled on “Ripples” as her song then, and the sad prophetic truth of the song—lamenting the fact that ripples never come back—came crashing down on him now. He couldn’t stop the onrushing memories. He didn’t want to.

  Nick cried, then sank into an exhausted sleep, dreams darkening his rest with their promise and tickling his intuition with the featherlike knowledge that he was missing something, something that the beast had found and tried to communicate to him.

  Lupo awoke, still thirsty.

  What was it about the Change that dried his throat and palate? he wondered as he staggered to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. He rinsed and spat into the sink, then swallowed several large gulps. He allowed some water to dribble down his chin, enjoying the tickling coolness on his skin, which always seemed hot and feverish after an episode. He stared at his hands, at his forearms, then glanced at the bloody marks he had left on the walls and on the door. There were no wounds or scratches, since minor wounds healed somehow on their own whenever he was in his other form. This was a phenomenon that Caroline had first observed and studied years ago, carefully documenting her conclusions in one of her hard-covered notebooks. They had speculated on the nature of the healing process, on what could possibly be happening at the cellular level, how it worked and to what extent.

  Lupo snorted. It had been probably a week now since he had thought of Caroline. Maybe even two weeks. Cheers. Let’s hear it for small victories. He toasted his haggard self as reflected in the smudged coffeepot on his counter.

  It was Corinne, of course. Her friendship had not quite replaced Caroline’s, for no one’s could, but it had allowed him some freedom to let Caroline inhabit a more remote area of his memory. She was there but not so prominent, not so accusing. Like his father, who had likewise receded in his mind until he had become a passing acquaintance, someone he had known in his youth but not so much his father. Some kinds of guilt were like that, Lupo knew, overlapping so they could sap your strength and darken your life at any particular moment, leading further into darkness that you ignored when working, when interactin
g with other people, but which you could rarely avoid when left defenselessly alone. Some kinds of guilt chewed at your soul until you started considering ways out, especially when you knew just how monstrous you really were.

  There was no song for Caroline. If there had been, its sound would have surely killed him.

  His friendship with Corinne had somehow made up for the loss of Caroline and his father, his two great failures. He’d started to consider himself human part of the time. He met his own distorted eyes in the curved reflection of the coffeepot, blinking and wondering who was looking at whom.

  He drank another long mouthful, then put the bottle away, now with the hunger gnawing at his stomach. He could feel the full moon coming—”Mad Man Moon”—just a couple days away, and his hunger always intensified during the cycle. He would eat then, but he knew the pit of his stomach would always feel empty, even after a meal. He had always considered it part of the curse, that horrible sense of emptiness. Sometimes stress or danger caused an unintentional change even outside the lunar cycle, and the hunger would be upon him, yet impossible to fulfill. Now that he seemed to be gaining some control over his temporary changes, would there be any difference? What if the bloodlust subsided at his command, much as regular everyday hunger could be held at bay with the thought of future satiation? He wondered how Caroline might have fit the eternal hunger into her theories. He also wondered if what he was learning now, damn near at middle age, might have saved Caroline way back then, when he was young and full of himself and his strange powers.

  Fuck this. He squeezed his eyes closed until they hurt.

  He pulled on sweat pants and a t-shirt that hung limp near the couch. He started to straighten the mess he had made of his desk, layering papers and books more or less the way they had been, in what he called his geologic system, where the oldest items were clearly on the bottom, with progressively newer files and folders spread out and upward in strata so that the upper layer was only a day or two old. As he did so, a sealed envelope caught his eye. It was a letter, but it was addressed to Corinne.