The Werewolf Chasers (Book 3): Wolf Hunt 3

by Strand, Jeff

  "Who did you bring back?"

  "We'll discuss it when I think you're ready."

  "You'll fucking tell me now."

  "No," said J.P. "I will not fucking tell you now. I will tell you on my own timeline, which is based on when I think you're prepared to handle the information. Right now, I don't think you are. The more hostile you get, the more I'll delay."

  "Fine," said George. "I don't need to know now. I've got plenty on my mind."

  "That's the right attitude."

  "When I find out, will I approve?"

  "No."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hell No

  George lay down on his bed. An image popped into his mind of Lou's resurrection going awry, and him cackling with madness and biting off his own tongue before George got to see him again. Maybe he shouldn't leave him alone with J.P. and Diane.

  He got out of bed and hurried over to his door. When he opened it, J.P. was standing right there, fist in the air as if about to knock.

  "Oh, hi," said J.P. "May I come in?"

  "Sure."

  J.P. stepped inside and closed the door. "Go ahead and have a seat," he said.

  George sat down on his bed.

  "I decided that you'd spend so much time thinking about who the person might be that it could be counter-productive to your mental health. So I'm going to explain everything, and you're going to politely listen, and you're not going to cause any problems. Are we on the same page?"

  "Sure."

  "We brought back Ivan Spinner."

  "Are you fucking kidding me?"

  "No."

  George was absolutely flabbergasted. "I'm not going to make any sudden moves, but is it impolite to ask why in the holy fuck you would bring him back to life? Ivan being dead is a very good thing. It's one of the best things I've done for the world. Do you know how hard he was to kill? Why would you undo that?"

  Ivan Spinner was the first werewolf George and Lou ever encountered, back in a more innocent time when a single werewolf on the loose seemed as bad as things could get for them. Their job was to transport him—in his human form, in a cage in the back of a van—across Florida. They, of course, did not believe he was a werewolf, though that naivety would be short-lived.

  George liked to believe that Ivan's escape from the cage was less about carelessness and more about lack of crucial information. Ivan was so good at being a werewolf that he could transform instantly, and more importantly, he could transform individual body parts. This came in quite helpful when somebody like George assumed he was out of reach of Ivan's outstretched arm, not realizing that Ivan could immediately give himself a longer wolfman arm and close the gap.

  Quite a few innocent people died during Ivan's rampage, including Michele, an amazing young woman who'd joined them for most of the pursuit. Eventually, he'd swallowed a silver cross, although that involved chomping off Lou's hand, which had been holding it. Ivan died, George and Lou went into hiding, and that should have been the conclusion of the tale of Ivan Spinner.

  "You need to calm down," said J.P.

  "I'm calm! I'm speaking in a raised voice. That's allowed, right? I'm not going to do anything. Explain your rationale. I'm ready to hear it."

  "We haven't been housing you and feeding you out of the goodness of our hearts. We've been nursing you back to health because we have an extremely important job for you. There's a werewolf, very high up the lycanthrope ladder, that we need you to assassinate for us."

  "Oh, sure. Lou and I will run right out and kill the Werewolf King."

  "If you think the world is better off without Ivan Spinner, I assure you, it's a million times better off without this man or beast or whatever you want to call him. While you and your friends were chasing after a couple of renegades, there were plans in the works with massive consequences. I'm talking about human versus lycanthrope war."

  George stared at him, trying to figure out if J.P. was full of shit or not. He had to be. But he had none of the tells of somebody who was lying, and also no motive that George could discern. Who would make up the idea of a war between humans and werewolves? If he was lying to get George to kill the dude, why not make up something more plausible?

  If this conversation was taking place a little earlier, George would have rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." But these people could bring the dead back to life. He was inclined to believe that they had a better working knowledge of the world than he did.

  "Okay," said George. "I'm totally with you in the idea that we need to knock off this important werewolf. Where you're losing me is the part where we needed Ivan to not be dead anymore. Because I liked him dead. It was fantastic. Not a day goes by that I think he should be back alive again."

  "Describe Ivan to me."

  "Asshole."

  "A little more detail."

  "A smug, psychotic prick. Evil. Thrill-killer. The worst person I have ever encountered in my life, and my entire job involves being surrounded by scumbags."

  J.P. nodded. "That's an apt description."

  "Thank you."

  "A savage beast, both as a human and a wolf. Completely reprehensible. Focused exclusively on his own sadistic pleasure. No redeeming qualities."

  "That's the guy," said George.

  "Would you consider him trustworthy?"

  "I would not."

  "Would anybody consider him to be trustworthy?"

  "Not if they spent two consecutive seconds around him, no."

  "Exactly!" said J.P.

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Our target will be extremely well protected. Nobody is getting anywhere close to him if they aren't part of his inner circle, except in extreme circumstances. Ally's a werewolf, but she'd never get a meeting. Nor would anybody else who's part of my team. The only person who might be able to get past that inner circle is a werewolf who couldn't possibly be working for the other side, who's known for being a psychotic loner with no ties to anybody, who would love to see humans and werewolves go at it in a bloody battle. Now who might that be...?"

  "That part of your logic holds up," said George. "The problem I see, and I'm sure you have an answer for it, is that it's all true. Ivan's not going to be a double agent for you. He's not going to work with the humans against the werewolves, or the werewolves against the humans, or for anybody."

  "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

  "Do you know differently?"

  "Yes. Let's just say that if you devote a lot of time and resources to the search, it's possible to find somebody that Ivan Spinner cares about. Deeply. Deeply enough that it can be used to control him."

  "Who?"

  "That's not information you need to know."

  "I dunno, I might spend so much time wondering who it could be that it's counter-productive to my mental health."

  "Very funny. I like you, George. And I trust you. What I don't trust is your ability to remain silent if a werewolf is jamming his talons underneath your fingernails to get you to talk."

  "Is that a possibility?"

  "It's not an impossibility."

  "Well, shit, sign me up."

  "The target is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. You and Lou will drive Ivan there. He'll be in a cage, just like old times. When you reach your destination, he'll complete the assassination. I have total faith that he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. If and when he succeeds, I will hold up my end of the agreement with him, and you can all part ways."

  "Sounds nice and easy."

  "Maybe it will be."

  "Fine," said George. "You have successfully convinced me that it was the right decision to bring back Ivan."

  "You're lying."

  "Yeah, but it doesn't matter. You're not going to chuck him into an incinerator on my behalf."

  "I'll let you know when Diane is done with her tests, then you can spend some more quality time with Lou."

  "Thanks."

  J.P. left.

  George's elation over gett
ing Lou back was more intense than his rage over the return of Ivan. The rationale seemed to make sense, more or less, but still, Ivan was not somebody who should be breathing again. Any plan that involved his participation had the very strong possibility of turning into a complete dumpster fire. George decided that for right now, he'd focus on the positive.

  Yet...he also had to question the positive.

  Why bring Lou back? It was fantastic for George, but what did it gain J.P.?

  Yes, it meant that George had a trusted partner with which to complete this job. And they were a successful team when they were breaking thumbs and intimidating lowlife scumbags. (George liked to think of himself as a higher class of scumbag.) The thing was, George and Lou's werewolf-themed experiences were monumental fuck-ups. You didn't say, "Do you know what this vitally important mission needs? The ever-competent duo of George Orton and Lou Flynn!"

  Something else was going on.

  He supposed it wasn't necessarily something sinister.

  It probably was.

  He'd bombarded J.P. with too many questions today. George didn't want the guy to clam up, so he'd let it go for the time being. Right now, he had some news to share.

  * * *

  "Lou is alive," he told Eugene.

  "Wait, what?"

  "They brought him back to life."

  "What?"

  "I saw him. I talked to him. It's Lou."

  "Like a zombie?"

  "No. You wouldn't even know he'd been dead."

  "What?"

  "It's crazy, right?"

  "When did they start bringing people back to life?"

  "Lou's their second one."

  "Who's the first?"

  "Ivan Spinner."

  "I don't know who that is."

  "You're better off for it."

  "Are you making this up?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Why would I come in here and tell you that Lou was alive if it wasn't true?"

  "A social experiment?"

  "He's alive."

  "Well, congrats."

  * * *

  "You're not going to believe this," he told Ally.

  "I bet I will. I believe a lot of weird stuff lately."

  "Lou's alive."

  "What?"

  "They brought him back to life."

  "Your partner Lou? The one who tried to help you kidnap me that one time?"

  "Yeah, him."

  "He's alive?"

  "Yeah."

  "He can't be."

  "I know, right? But he is."

  "You mean his dead body is, like, stumbling around and moaning?"

  George shook his head. "He's acting normal."

  "Bullshit."

  "He is."

  "Bull. Shit."

  "Why would I make this up?"

  "Because it's funny."

  "It's not funny. Lou's death was the worst moment of my life. Playing a little joke by saying that he'd been brought back would not amuse me in the least. I feel like you should have a pretty good grasp of my sense of humor by now, and this would be completely out of character."

  "So Lou's alive?"

  "Yes."

  "That's fucked up."

  "Have I ever mentioned that I don't like it when you curse?"

  "Why? You have a total potty mouth."

  "I'm a middle-aged thug."

  "I'm sorry if I stung your delicate ears. I'll think of different words to use. I know that you're really busy these days and don't have extra time to spend praying for my eternal soul."

  "Smartass."

  "I like how you curse while you're scolding me for cursing."

  "I wasn't scolding you. I was making an observation."

  "Lou's seriously alive?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's insane."

  "Yeah."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Uses For A Human Skull

  Desmond Reith's skull rested on the desk. Asher Anderson enjoyed looking at it.

  He'd originally planned a "drink from the skulls of your enemies" thing when he decided to keep the skull as a souvenir. Then he decided that this was too respectful. Perhaps even an honor. So instead, Reith's skull was a pencil holder, an indignity made worse by the fact that Asher hadn't used a pencil in twenty years.

  Sometimes, late at night, when the building's occupants were in their own rooms, he pretended that the skull was talking in a high-pitched squeaky voice. "Please, oh, please take these pencils out of my eye sockets! They hurt ever so badly!" His pets would be surprised if they overheard this. Their master was not known for his sense of humor.

  Asher took one of the pencils out and gently tapped it on the cranium. Ah, Desmond Reith. You wretched excuse for a human being. Being torn apart by hungry wolves was too good for you. Not long enough to suffer. You deserved to feel that agony for weeks, not seconds.

  The alarm on his cell phone went off. It was eleven-fifty. Time to head down to the basement.

  There was no practical reason that the feedings needed to happen at midnight, but he was a fan of mysterious rituals. It's why he often wore a black cloak. He didn't need to wear the cloak. The cloak was, in fact, quite cheesy. But when he stood there, addressing his pets in the candlelit chamber, the theatrics definitely worked on his behalf.

  He needed every edge he could get, because being a werewolf leader was more of a self-proclaimed position than one that he'd been elected to, appointed to, or born into. He'd basically decided that he was the right person for the job and made a long-term plan for that to happen. Werewolves were not particularly well organized. He honestly didn't even know how many of them were out there.

  Truthfully, there wasn't a lot of werewolf business to conduct. They didn't have annual meetings or anything. Mostly his role was to give them a safe place to live if they came here seeking sanctuary. The number of werewolves living in the building varied from week to week. Right now it was nineteen.

  He wanted werewolves to stay out of the public eye, to reside amongst normal human beings without anybody ever knowing of their alternate identities. It wasn't as if that was a huge sacrifice. He wasn't asking anybody to stay hidden away—just to keep the werewolf part under wraps. But if they wanted to live here, they were welcome to stay for as long as they wished.

  On very rare occasions, he arranged for cleanup.

  Witnesses claiming they saw a werewolf had much less credibility if there was no body. He wasn't sure if an autopsy on the human form would show any evidence of lycanthropy, but he'd feel much safer if their corpses didn't go under the knife.

  Until recently, Ivan Spinner had been their biggest disaster. Fortunately, he was so sloppy that Asher was able to have people in the area ready to collect him before he was actually killed. His body was collected and burned. Asher outsourced that work to a human.

  He walked down the three flights of stairs to the basement. Though the building had an elevator, exercise was important.

  Most of the center of the basement floor was taken up by a large circular pit. It was similar to the one where Buffalo Bill kept his victims in Silence of the Lambs, though significantly wider and nobody would be asked to put lotion on their skin. He could hear the children mewling.

  Lycanthropes often gave birth to other lycanthropes. Usually the births were no different than a regular human birth, but sometimes the werewolf element complicated things. It would be difficult to explain to a regular obstetrician why a furry hand was reaching out of there. And so, Asher had his own private service where werewolf women could give birth to their offspring under the guidance of an experienced professional. At no charge, of course.

  It was one of the best things he did for the werewolf community.

  Most of the time he'd send the loving parents home without knowing if their child was "normal" or not. He'd only been doing this for a few years, so he assumed that it would be another few years before he started getting official status reports.

  In the less
frequent times that the baby was indeed a werewolf...well, that was a much unhappier experience.

  You didn't simply have babies who could transform into wolves. That would actually be kind of adorable. Werewolf babies were prone to birth defects. Horrific ones. Twisted limbs. Mouths where they didn't belong. Internal organs that weren't internal.

  These weren't children that could, with a great deal of patience and parental support, go on to something that had echoes of a normal life. These were hideous deformities that would have no existence but to eat, shit, and maybe scream.

  The parents were almost always grateful for Asher to take them away.

  Every once in a long while, the mother/child bond would be so strong that they'd actually want to keep their monstrosity. Asher would gently try to dissuade them of this idea. Usually he was successful—after all, there were a great many reasons that you wouldn't want to raise a child in this condition, if you could even call it "raising" instead of just "feeding."

  If that didn't work, he'd try not so gently.

  If that didn't work, he'd tell them that he completely understood, and that they were more than welcome to stay here until he was able to release their child for them to take home. The child would, thanks to a subtle effort on his part, not survive.

  Asher, who did not have children of his own, could not understand the intense level of heartbreak some parents expressed over the loss of something so grotesque.

  But, again, those were rare cases. Most parents did not want to return home with something that bore no resemblance to a human or a wolf. And they left, eyes moist, but thankful that relatives wouldn't gaze into the crib and recoil with horror.

  He didn't want to kill them. He'd kill a deformed baby to keep its parents from taking it home and getting media attention, but he wouldn't kill an innocent baby whose parents had left it in his care, under the assumption that it would be dead within a few days anyway.

  Those babies went into the pit.

  They were surprisingly resilient.

  Asher picked up the two heavy buckets. Sometimes they got a live meal, and sometimes they'd get a whole animal carcass, but usually it was like tonight: buckets of raw meat. A mix of beef and chicken—not the prime cuts. They also enjoyed buckets of blood as a treat.