All right, Blaze. Let’s do this. I exhale and reach over to open the door while still pressing my back against the wall. As soon as it opens, I step into the opening, my shotgun poking its nose into the house.
“Hunter!” Just as one of the wolves yells, I feel the recoil of my Remington kicking into me; the result of me pulling the trigger. The spray of my shot catches a werewolf-mid-transformation as he jumps at me, riddling him with pellets of silver and a force strong enough to reverse his trajectory.
He crashes into a wooden table, his body falling on top of one of the bloody carcasses they’d brought in before I arrived.
I pump again and shoot, catching more wolves near the table before they can react to what’s going on. An off-center pellet of silver from my second pump whizzes through the side of a female wolf’s face, flooring her, along with the others unfortunate enough to get caught in its radius.
That makes four. I take a step forward to shoot at the pool of bodies for good measure but a rapid set of footsteps seizes my attention. “Shit!” I turn to face the sound but his speed beats my reaction time. I fire, but the shot goes astray from the weight of his body against my gun. The wolf tackles me to the ground after bursting through a neighboring wall. I slide across the ground with him on top of me, my shotgun serving as a buffer between my face and his claws. The wolf yells in pain as he recoils off me. I take the split-second window to pivot my shotgun towards his upper chest, turn away and shoot before he can sneak in a quick bite. His body jolts from the impact and falls backwards, bending at the knee. “Silver finish, asshat.”
Before I can stand, another wolf turns the corner, fully transformed, just like the one before. I shoot from the ground, but he darts into an adjacent room, dodging the majority of my spread. I know I nicked him on his escape. His body jutted irregularly just as he faded from view.
I hurry to my feet and do a quick check to make sure I hadn’t been tagged without knowing. As I check, the house creeks with the sound of wolves stirring throughout the interior, primarily from the second floor, directly above.
I trace the steps above me and fire at the ceiling twice. A thud registers in my ears, but just as I begin to let my guard down, a spray of bullets rain down from the ceiling, making their way towards me.
I run into the adjacent room, stepping through the hole made by the now-dead werewolf that I blasted at point-blank range. The bullets stop their rain as the wolves relocate and I make it my priority to get ready for the next round.
Damn it, one shot left.
Somehow, of all places, I end up in the kitchen. I post against the fridge and begin to reload my shotgun. The contents of the fridge rattle from my weight and I hear the sound of glasses bumping into each other. I don’t even want to think about what’s inside.
Leftovers.
Definitely human leftovers.
A wolf that didn’t quite get the memo comes at me from the hall and I quickly shift over to one of my Berettas. She thought she had the jump on me but was in for a surprise once I peppered her with a few rounds to the neck and chest.
What’s that? Seven? Seven point five?
I finish loading my shells and switch back to using my shotgun as my primary weapon. I silence my steps and transfer back into the previous room where I got my first string of kills. It’s a horrible sight to see—a bunch of bodies piled together leaking all over one another.
It doesn’t get old, but it does get easier.
I fire off a round into the heap from a distance for good measure; just to be sure that none of them are playing dead and waiting for the chance to indoctrinate me. Phil said there were about seven or so wolves. Well, I’m just about at that number and there’s at least one more.
“It’s over. Just come on out and we can get this over with,” I say as I walk the area, scouting for anymore threats. “Did you guys really think you could live in peace while snatching up humans and throwing banquets?” I stumble upon the second body on a table near the front door, bloodied and carved into with no remorse. Parts of her flesh are on the outskirts of the black bag she came in, draping over the edges, her blood, still slowly dripping on the cabin’s wooden floor. I’m glad she was dead before it started. “Someone had to come for you guys, sooner or later. Could have kept it simple…fed off of livestock…kept a low profile, but ya’ll had to do it your way and fuck up some people’s lives…well, it’s over now. I’ve got the place surrounded and pretty soon they’ll be moving in.” If they wanted to, I’m sure the remaining wolves could have busted out from a window or something and made a run for it, but for some reason, they decided to stick around.
If I had more prep time, I would have lined as much of the perimeter with traps as I could. Being in the spur of the moment and a partner down really screwed me over.
Sailor would have been easily able to handle anyone trying to escape, but then again, if Sailor was here with me, I doubt there’d be any wolves left here to begin with.
“Talk?” I hear a set of footsteps coming from the winding stairs. “What is there to talk about? You come into my home and shoot my people. It seems we’re far beyond that, wouldn’t you say?” A man in an animal pelt emerges with a hostage pressed to him, under his forearm. She’s awfully quiet, but I imagine it’s because of the submachine gun pressed to her temple.
“So, you must be Jeb, right?” I muse, my shotgun still trained on him.
“The one and only,” he says and reveals a bloody set of teeth. “Just like yourself.”
Damn it. Well, at least I tried. He’s looking for a fight, and he knows I’m alone.
“You’re alone.” He laughs but, there’s pain in his voice. A pain he doesn’t seem to be good at hiding. I do a quick scan of his body and find a splatter of red connecting from his hostage’s dress to his vest. He was shot. At first, I thought it was a graze, but he doesn’t seem to be getting any better. It stuck with him; the pellets from the shell. He has silver in him, no doubt about it, and it’s giving him hell. That’s why he chose not to shift. He’s too hurt to outright run in his transformed state.
“You’ve been turning people?” I ask, making sure I have a clear route to go in case he decides to get desperate and try his luck.
To my left is good. There’s enough objects to serve as a buffer between him and his gun. Once he’s out of ammo, he won’t have any other option but to ditch the girl if he wants to reload. Plus, he’s injured and actively losing blood, whether he looks it or not, he’s hurting. Fading.
“A boy here, a girl there. Nothing personal. My constituents on the other hand, tend to do the recruiting now-a-day.”
“Philip Moss?”
“Oh, the new wolf? He’s a handful, isn’t he? I’m surprised you were able to put a name to a face. You hunters are getting more resourceful by the minute.”
“Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t have let your new pet run amok.”
“I…never said we turned him.”
“Didn’t have to. You’re either turning someone or you’re killing them,” I snarl. “And we’re smack dab in the middle of Exhibit A, right now, if you’re a little slow.”
“I do tend to keep live ones for myself.” He smiles from behind the woman’s hair. “He was an orphan. We gave him an escape. A home. Way more than what his family ever gave him, I’m sure.”
“He killed his own sister out of bloodlust. There’s no way you can honestly think you made his situation better. That’s just the infection talking. How long have you been a wolf? Do you even remember what it’s like to not crave human flesh?”
“As a wolf, he was given a freedom that few are able to find on this earth.”
“I don’t think that’s one hundred percent accurate, especially since you and your dead pals force yourselves on your victims. Hate to break it to you, but no one wants to be a wolf. No one.”
“Ah, but once it does happen, there’s nothing like it.”
“Yeah, nothing quite like feasting on a person’s insides an
d drinking their blood like soup. Seems great… Let the girl go.”
“Are you sure I should do that?” His head inches toward her neck, revealing his fangs from his otherwise human appearance.
“If you bite her, I swear.”
“You’ll put her down, too? Right?” He retracts his head from her neck. “Of course. That’s what you hunters do.” He chuckles. “How about this. You let me go to my car and I’ll let her go. You stay put and let me go about my merry way. No guns. No fangs. No claws. A gentleman’s truce.”
“I can’t do that, man. You know I can’t.”
“Oh, well you see, the thing is, you can…unless you don’t mind having another individual infected with our ideals.” The woman squirms at the werewolf’s proposal.
Damn it. “Yeah, no. I don’t think that’s gonna fly. You’re in no position to bargain. You’re hurt. I got you.”
“You’re right. I’m not. Maybe I should just bite her then to speed things up. What do you say, hunter?” I hold my tongue, answering him with my silence. “Exactly.” In our standoff, I search for a variety of ways to get the upper hand, but nothing comes to mind. As long as there’s a body blocking me from the alpha, there’s nothing I can do. “So, what will it be?”
On the flipside, there’s a million and one things he could do to sway things in his favor, more so than they already are. Push the woman into me, shoot us both. Push the woman into me, shoot us both, then bite us. Leave with the woman. Use the woman as a shield and spray…the list goes on. But honestly, I’m starting to think he doesn’t want to use her as leverage at all. I think he’s trying to save them both. Jeb only came in with two bags, and it’s safe to assume that they were dead on arrival. There’s a chance that there could have been a third, that they were looking to do an induction, but I didn’t hear anything from her. Not even a peep. Hard not to panic when it’s your first encounter with the supernatural, and she’s not drugged or anything, from what I can tell, but still, nothing.
“…How are we going to arrange this?” I ask, buying myself more time to think. “I’m not dropping my gun.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“You’re hurt. How much longer you think you can keep this up? That silver’s a bitch, ain’t it?” I retort.
What if that girl is really a part of his pack?
“It is.” He nuzzles his nose along her neck. “Maybe I need a snack to replenish my strength.”
“Yeah, and then you lose.”
“But, so do you, hunter. So do you.”
“If I let you leave, you’ll just make more wolves.”
“Well, you did thin us out quite a bit. A man needs his family, am I right?”
“I swear I—”
“Don’t you hunters have a code or something? Well, maybe that goes for the more honorable ones. I can’t quite get a read on you yet, but seeing that we’re still having this conversation, you seem to be of the lot that hasn’t completely gone off the deep end. At least, not yet. You new to the game, boy?”
“It’s not wise to hurl insults when you’re on your last leg.” I growl.
He’s trying something… He’s trying to shift my focus. I subtly slide my back foot behind me to gain some more distance between us, my shotgun still pointed at him. Time to make my play. If I fall behind, I’m dead.
“You guys are just as depraved as us—hunting people. Killing them. It’s a game to you, isn’t it? One you’ve learned to enjoy. They say that hunters often make the best wolves. Transferable skills and whatnot. I can vouch for that claim, speaking from past experience, myself.”
“And that’s what you have planned for me?”
“Oh, of course not, well, at least not today. I expect one day we’ll meet again.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
“Then shoot me. Hunt,” he voices suggestively as he leans in. “Because now, I reckon I’ll just take this lady with me since you’re taking your sweet ass time with this.”
Damn it.
I contemplate running into another room, but I can’t outrun a submachine gun. Once I’m out of his sight, he’ll just blast away. If I survive, I’ll be injured enough for him to do whatever he wants. I don’t like how this is turning out, but I’ve got to go for it.
I remove one of my hands from the base of my shotgun and slide the other into one of my pockets.
“Hey, now. None of that. Hand back on your gun where I can see it.” He makes his claim, but I’d already grabbed what I set out to get. Hopefully, it’s my answer to this debacle.
“Sure thing.” I begin to slowly retract my hand from my pocket, but quickly flick the item towards them before he can react.
“Ah!”
The girl shrieks as the silver necklace lands on her face.
Werewolf.
Of course.
I blast the both of them, shooting through their ruse and breaking free of the standoff. The pellets from my shot land flush, tearing through the female werewolf and Jeb, who falls to the ground, shooting strays in his descent.
I pump again and fire at their downed bodies, finishing them off for good.
“Almost had me,” I mumble as I overlook his corpse. “Guess today wasn’t your lucky day.” I do a quick sweep of the house, starting with the first floor. No wolves. I then do the second and come across three wolves altogether, dead from when I shot at the ceiling. I pump a shell into each of them, just to be sure.
Overall, the house seemed to be like a den; their central living space. I could have scoured the house for more information, but the emptiness after a long night was beginning to get to me. From what I did manage to see, they lived pretty bare-bones. Nothing stuck out as a tell that werewolves exist. The virus dies when the wolf dies. Everyone dead reverts back to their human form. The only thing that the cops’ll have on them is the fridge of human remains and the missing bodies that’ve been feasted on. They’ll label them as cannibals…that or some kind of occult ritual gone wrong.
Anything but werewolves.
There’s a chance another wolf or pack or whatever might swing by to clean up the mess before the cops get to it. Cops don’t do random house checks. It could take days. Weeks, even, depending on how isolated they are. The wolves may beat them to the scene, but it’s hard to gauge how close they are. In their defense, they’re a community, just like us. If there’s radio silence, they’ll be sure to send some of their own to check things out. That’s the way it works around here; an endless war of us versus them.
I exit from the back door and immediately check the underbelly of the veranda before disappearing back into the woods. Phil did good with the numbers, but he was wrong. There were more wolves than he thought, which means more could be in the area.
Eventually, I make it back to my car and hit the road.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Roc. It’s me.”
“Blaze? How you holding up, buddy?”
“I did it. It’s done.”
“Done?”
“I found the wolf. I got him.” I exit my car and step out into an abandoned lot, Clyde’s shirt wrapped around my hand. I’d taken it off at one of the lights on the way here, but by now the scent had enough time to stick to me until I wash properly. The shirt on the other hand, is like a perma-beacon to any wolf close enough to pick up the smell. “He’s dead.” I toss it the ground, reach into my popped trunk, and grab my lighter fluid.
“That’s good. Glad you got him. You made it out okay though, right? No bites?”
“Yeah,” I respond as I drizzle it on the shirt. “Yeah, I did. No bites. The wolf was an orphan. Philip Moss. He was bit a couple months back when a wolf went after him and his sister,” I say as I grab a match from my supplies.
“Damn.”
“It took some time, but he lost himself to the transformation.” I squat down and strike the match before tossing it onto the smothered shirt, instantly causing it to catch ablaze. “He killed his sister. She was the only thing that
was keeping him sane. He tried to feed on her, but when he realized what he was doing, it became a mercy killing. From there, he just kept on slipping. When I found him, he didn’t put up much of a fight. He knew what he had become.” I smirk and shake my head. “But that was after I lured him out and trapped him.”
“He wasn’t sorry about what he did. He was just sorry that he had got caught,” Roc says.
“Maybe.” I stand up and lean against my car as I watch the flames. “But he did help me out. There were other wolves; a pack trying to recruit him. He gave me the address of their cabin after I iced one of the wolves tailing him.”
“Are you going after the others? Give me the address and I can meet you in a couple d—”
“I got it, Roc. It’s already done. There were about ten of them.”
“Blaze… You killed them all?”
“Yeah,” I answer soberly. “Every last one.”
“And you’re not infected?”
“No. I told you. No bites. I’m just good at what I do.” And I’ve been drowned in a state of indifference.
“Look, about what happened with S—”
“Don’t. I understand where you’re coming from, and I appreciate the concern, but I really can’t hear that right now. It’s still too raw. But, hey… I…I just wanted to let you know that I’m okay. I’m okay, but I’m going to be going it alone for a while. I’ll keep in touch…check up now and again…but I need some time to myself to get my head right.”
“Take as long as you need, bro.”
“Thanks, bud. I’ll be sure to call.” I hang up on Roc and continue to watch the flames incinerate the werewolf’s shirt.
Phil and I weren’t that much different. We’d both been thrown into a world we never wanted to be a part of. We were innocent. Someone made the choice for us; grabbed our hand and forced it to the fire. Same with Sailor. She didn’t want any of this, either. Her dad dragged her in after what happened to her mom. Now they’re both dead and I’m probably not too far behind. The life of a hunter. It sucks, but it’s all I’ve ever known since I lost my family.
Blaze Monroe and the Broken Heart Page 7
