Fine, Karina thought, but just wait until we get out of town. “So, you don’t figure on being followed?”
“Me? No,” grinned Adam, pulling out onto the highway. “Everybody reckons you’ve been kidnapped, but then, everybody is looking for desRosiers, aren’t they?”
Karina sank into the car seat.
“Talk to me, Miss Redfeather. We can work this out so that very few people get hurt.”
“As opposed to?”
“As opposed to more people like Travis, the Whitehead kids, and Bill. And no, it does not matter that Deputy Moore was a yellow-livered toad.” Adam was tight-lipped but shook his head. “You still don’t see it.”
Karina was silent.
Adam glanced at her. “Or maybe you do, finally. Want to tell me about what happened last night?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Yet.” Adam stepped on the gas and said no more. And the hours-long stalemate had begun, with a brief and silent stop at a roadside stand for food and other needs. Karina’s mind began to form a way out.
Once night had fallen, along with a couple of inches of hard rain, they were still on the road. Adam had stuck to routes off the main highway. “I’m not taking you home until you talk to me,” he warned, but Karina still wasn’t cooperating.
“Hungry?” Adam’s voice reached through the thoughts tumbling around in Karina’s mind and she shook her head.
“We won’t be stopping anywhere for a couple more hours.”
“I’d like some water if you have any.”
Adam reached into the compartment between the two front seats. “It’s not cold, sorry.”
“It’s all right, thanks.” Karina’s heart began racing.
Inside the compartment, tucked under the water bottle where Adam hadn’t noticed it, was her getaway ticket. Now, for a reason to pull over and get at it.
If she could get out at a gas station and locate an old landline phone, there might be a chance to call her grandmother. It had been so long, though — how would her grandmother take such a phone call? They hadn’t seen each other since Karina was about five. Her grandmother hadn’t even attended her own son’s funeral — it had been eight years, Karina remembered sorely, since her father’s sudden death.
“I’ll need to stop at the next place with a restroom,” she announced.
“All right.”
Twenty minutes later, they rolled into a dully lit, muddy way station. The rain had eased to a smatter, and Adam caught her by the wrist as she reached into the back for her bag.
“Going somewhere else?” he smiled with no warmth.
“Girl things. I need my bag.”
Adam raised an eyebrow.
“I told you, it’s a girl thing. I’ll ruin your car seat,” she declared and he released her. Thank heaven that for all their blood-and-guts bravado, men were awfully squeamish about certain kinds of biological events.
It was just about that time, though, and she hoped Simon had remembered her calendar and found what she was going to want when he’d packed her things. It would be just like him to take care of her needs like that. She pushed that thought away, and Adam caught the flicker of pain.
“We’ll be there soon,” he said gently. “I promise, you will be safe and cozy. And fed.”
“I’ll be just a minute,” Karina murmured, and disappeared into the convenience store for a bathroom key. Once inside the restroom, she checked the bag, found that Simon had indeed left her with everything she’d need for a few days on her own, and then stepped back to size up the tiny window. She’d never break through those vents. Maybe she could wait this out …
And she did, ever so coolly, thinking and waiting.
Eventually Adam came knocking on the door.
“I feel sick,” Karina told him in muffled tones. “Could you do me a favor please? Could you get me some painkillers?”
“We’ll be where we’re going soon. Come on out of there; the sooner you do, the sooner we’ll be there.”
“I can’t … cramps … ” Karina forced a retching sound as she turned on the faucet to a convincing splatter in the sink. “Adam …”
She heard a muffled groan as he stepped quickly away. “I’ll leave the car open.” He turned the corner into the store.
Well, if she couldn’t pull this off, at least she had her bag, and she ducked into the night, hidden from the clerk and Adam as they navigated their way through the puzzlement of painkillers for women’s ills.
Yet again, Simon had taught her a skill she’d laughed about at the time. “You live by yourself, and you never know.” She swiftly entered the car, found the basic tool kit in the compartment where the water bottle had been, and began sweating her way through the process of hot wiring the car. Her fingers were numb but Simon had made her go over it and over it, finally making her repeat the whole procedure in the dark, “because that’s when you’ll probably need to do it.”
The store bell dinged just as Karina crossed the wires and gunned the gas; Adam jumped after her, grabbed the handle and jerked the door open, but Karina wheeled the car and he slipped off, yelling something she couldn’t catch. Well, she thought, laughing silently, who are you going to tell? and tore off into the night.
Karina was very familiar with this road. She knew that the terrifying beauty of the wild bush country led to hikers going missing and becoming disoriented in the dense brush, only to be located, far too late, mere yards from a roadway or lake. For Karina, though, it would be excellent cover.
Dammit, though. The car was now dangerously low on gas; Adam must have wanted to get to their destination and not use his credit card at the station. Karina pulled into a recess off the paved roadway as soon as she could and began covering the car with branches and other growth. She raked and scuffed the tire tracks on the shoulder, settled back into the car, and began to doze in the darkness under the gentle rain.
Shortly before dawn came a brutal crack on the branches. Bewildered, Karina came around sharply and stared through the windshield into the enraged eyes of the man she’d fled the night before. The window broke on the passenger side; a gray sleeve punched through, opened the door and revealed itself to belong to Adam’s companion Reese, the youthful red-haired Hunter who was now leaning into the car and motioning her out. There was no choice. Karina grabbed her bag, exited the vehicle as commanded and stared the men down.
“We’re Hunters,” explained Adam, coldly. “Remember?”
That Lonesome Thing
Carl and Tyler had returned to the guest house mid-afternoon with foul news; they’d found evidence of having been followed to the main cottage, possibly by Hunters, and absolutely no trace of Vertigo.
“It gets worse,” Carl intoned as the group huddled in the galley kitchen. “Adam Hunter was waiting for Karina at the drive and wouldn’t let her walk on by herself. I doubled back to see what else was going on; the place is full of Hunters. There’s even an FBI van there. Looks as if they’re using Karina’s house as a base. She’ll never be able to leave on her own.”
“How do we get her out?” asked Tyler, shrugging off his jacket. “Hey, Simon — she wouldn’t say anything, though, would she?”
The parting expression on Karina’s face was imprinted on Simon’s conscience. “No, I don’t think so.”
“She looked pretty upset when she was walking toward her house,” observed Tyler. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure. She wasn’t mad at you.”
“We’re busted, though,” Greg’s voice was low. “At the risk of sounding like a bad movie, we’d better split.”
Old Jake was going to be a problem. Attached to Simon as he was, and sensing Simon’s fear for Karina, he could not control himself, and began babbling and rocking on the living room floor.
“I’ve got him,” Greg nodded. “Carl, Ty, you want to split up?” Both men shook their heads. “Ty’s still new,” explained Carl, “and we don’t know what’s coming.”
Simon put his c
offee mug down forcefully. “I’m going after Rina.”
“You’ll never get near the house,” warned Greg.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Yes, I would. Shocked.” Greg leaned his back on the pantry door and crossed his arms. “Look, Simon. If Karina had been mad enough to talk, they would have this place corralled already. My guess is she’s buying us some time. Let’s take it.” He held up his hand, “And before you go charging in like a white knight, ask yourself how that would look. It makes Karina an accessory to murder, at best, if you confirm all those suspicions. At least this way she can claim she never knew anything. Just the way you wanted it.”
Admitting that fact was painful. Simon nodded silently.
Greg waved his hand around the galley, “Ty and Carl still have bikes, but the rest of us, we’re going to have to travel the old-fashioned way.”
“The train again?” asked Tyler, hoping for a safe place to stow his mountain bike before jumping into a moving freight car.
“Hope you still have your harmonica,” muttered Simon.
“Can we sing? Can we sing?” clapped Jake, looking up hopefully from his tucked-up spot on the sofa, eyes still wet.
“Just not in public,” Carl came into view, his bag packed to bursting. “Remember what happened to that opera tenor, what’s his name — Lorenzo — three or four months ago?”
“What happened?” asked Tyler.
“The Hunters started an ugly rumor that werewolves are uncannily good singers, particularly good at harmonizing.”
“Actually,” broke in Simon bleakly, “that one is true.”
After a pause, Carl continued, “Well, after one particularly good show featuring a particularly striking duet, a group of Hunters was waiting for the poor fellow at the stage door. The commotion nearly ruined his career.”
“What!” exclaimed Simon, the world having regained his full attention.
“Huh,” said Tyler, “so that’s what my cousin meant when my aunt broke up his garage band.”
“Let’s just go.” Simon stood up suddenly. Everybody had packed and was more or less ready to leave.
“I’ll take care of Jake. We’ll meet at the train.” Greg rose with a grin. “Where do you want to head?”
“Not far, I’d say. South Dakota, Nebraska maybe?” Carl’s voice came from the porch as he scouted the surroundings.
“Not nearly that far,” Greg shook his head vehemently. “We really aren’t myths anymore so it doesn’t matter where we go; there’s no point in hiding for long. Adam Hunter’s crowd will attract everyone who’s ever seen a werewolf movie, and I’m gonna bet that on our end, we have the biggest wolf gathering in history next moon. If Vertigo’s here, he’s probably summoned the rest of the Firewolves. I want to see what their angle will be.”
“Outside Duluth, then?” Simon looked up from the duffel bag he was cramming with extra cans of food.
“That’s far enough, yeah. That should do it. Somewhere northeast of the city, say …” Greg was tracing a foldout map now, “right here.”
Simon hesitated a moment, recognizing the territory. He met Greg’s steady gaze, which carried a warning to keep silent.
“And we’re gone,” Greg declared. “See you all at the train.” With that, he and Old Jake headed south into the woods; Carl and Tyler biked west; and Simon, fully aware that Greg would know his every move no matter what he did, struck out east, backtracked anyway and began to hunt the Hunter.
◆◆◆
The rain grew steadily heavier. Simon, while preserving as much of his previous night’s wolflike self as he could by sticking to the deep shadows of late afternoon, was frustrated by the confusion of olfactory leads in the woods. He could hear the movements of many people tromping on the porch and snapping twigs around the house, but Adam’s scent remained the most recent in the drive, along with Karina’s. It looked as if Hunter had taken her himself, and driven off. Think, think.
He felt Greg before he heard the quiet voice. “Let it go, Simon.”
When he turned to face his friend, Greg simply said, “Even if Vertigo is following her, she’ll be safer in there with Adam Hunter’s crowd than with us,” he jerked his head toward the dirt road as his eyes bored into Simon’s. “Given everything, she’s actually better off with him alone right now.”
For the first time, Simon felt the rain, the cold, the absolute defeat of the day, and the emptiness of all his unspoken words. Every icy raindrop stung his skin. His bones were devoid of marrow. It was all too late.
“Come on,” Greg said gently. “Nothing more you can do here. Let’s go. Come on, I promised Jake we’d take a real train tonight.”
Within a few hours, the odd trio had joined their companions aboard a freight car and begun the soggy, dark journey northwest, Greg’s harmonica echoing the mournful whistle in the lonesome night.
The Creek Run — Werewolves Attack Pigeon Creek
Artist Redfeather Disappears
Pigeon Creek — Missing artist Karina Redfeather is now the subject of a Federal manhunt, as is her cousin Simon desRosiers, according to an FBI spokesperson (who wished to remain anonymous as he or she was unauthorized to speak to the press) in a phone conversation this morning.
After a second apparently wild-sounding night, which occurred this time with no reports of personal or property damage, what’s left of Pigeon Creek’s edgy population awoke to the sight of government vehicles throughout the town, concentrated on the Redfeather property.
Rumors say that the howls heard in the woods belonged to several different individuals, but guesses as to the number are hard to come by.
The Whitehead family, who had been staying at the Silverized main house, were allowed to leave late this morning and spoke with the Creek Run on their way to Duluth this afternoon.
“We were startled when Simon took Karina away with him, but I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping.” Mrs. Whitehead agrees, pointing out that there was never any animosity evident between the two. “Beyond that, we are not supposed to talk to the press about it,” she said, adding, “Actually, we were not supposed to talk to you at all.”
The couple and their small children proceeded on their way, but not before the Whiteheads mentioned that Adam Hunter, leader of the now-famous Hunters, was also missing. “Who knows where?” was the only response they could give.
Adam Hunter was indeed unavailable for comment today, and no further information is forthcoming.
Editorial note: The print edition of the Creek Run has been suspended for the time being, but the Run will still be available in its online format until further notice.
Marked
Karina’s escape, while invigorating, was short-lived, and enough to put her in Adam’s bad books again. His interrogations grew colder as the group waited inside the car for a Hunter vehicle to appear with a can of gas.
“We’re turning around,” Adam informed the SUV’s gray-clad driver, and the two vehicles headed back toward what the Hunters kept referring to as HQ. He turned to Karina, who was ensconced in the back seat. “Let me point out to you, Ma’am,” oh, she was tired of hearing that voice, “that if you were to do something silly like call the police or the FBI, why, you would have to explain every little thing to them.”
“Like the fact that I was kidnapped by UFO hunters? I’m not worried about the FBI.”
“You ought to be. Because, Ma’am?” Adam’s iced smile had the intended effect. “Where do you think we get our equipment?”
◆◆◆
The rain was again pounding on the roof of Karina’s cottage, which was surrounded by Hunters, nearly all of them men. They seemed frighteningly self-sustaining, Karina noted in the brief look she’d had in the darkness as Adam and Reese hurried her inside.
There was no trace of the violence that had occurred there in the living room, where Bill’s immolated self had left not a scorch on the wooden floor. Karina wondered how the Hunters might have handled the solitary badge, but co
uldn’t bring herself to ask.
Adam “allowed” her to go to her room, which nettled her to distraction. She stood there for a moment, fighting the feelings of illness that had plagued her all day. After a quick shower, she was able to pull on some loose jeans and an oversized sweatshirt that read “Resisting Invaders Since 1492,” drag herself into the living room, and curl up on the sofa, wrapped in a soft tartan blanket.
Reese McConnell’s red hair caught the firelight from the river rock hearth. “It was a good try,” he offered a bright grin along with the steaming mint tea he presented to Karina. He had the same Texas drawl and outdoorsy good looks, but none of Adam’s understated swagger. “Hot wiring a man’s car. You really kicked him in the … uh, guts.”
Karina accepted the hot drink and drew the blanket closer around her. Reese continued, “Funny as hell, though. Who’d a’ thought?” He sat down on the large padded rocking chair next to the sofa.
Karina managed a watery smile through the steam above her mug.
“Aw, he’ll get over it.” Reese shook his head and chuckled, rocking gently.
“I’m quite sure he will.”
“You’re not hurt or nothin’?”
“It’s just been a bad day or so, thanks.”
“Yeah, I guess. Adam said you almost got bit? One of ’em marked you or something?”
Karina had almost forgotten. She looked at the red V, which seemed unusually fresh, on her hand.
“Here, lemme see that, can I?” Reese leaned toward her and gently took her hand. “Shoot, that’s Vertigo’s mark.”
“There are other marks?” Karina stared at him and then caught Adam’s eye as he came in from the cold soggy night. There was an air of pepper spray about him.
“Others? — Hey there, Adam — others, hell yes. All the Firewolves mark their vics if they can. Kind of a — trademark, I guess you could say.”
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