by L. A. Banks
The thing she circled was wild in the eyes, knocking down trees with its massive fists, just punching them out of his way as he barreled through the forest hunting for her. She had to get back to the lodge, had to double back before the beast sensed her location.
Sasha brought both amulets that she wore to her lips and kissed them and then ran toward the truck that was her only hope of escape. With the shotgun she could detonate the tank. A tire iron could take out an eye.
Out of breath by the time she reached the truck, she jumped in, backed the vehicle up in a screeching roar, bounced onto the asphalt, and burned rubber down the road.
At a hundred twenty miles per hour, the F-150 would pack a punch when it blew. The moment a huge black wolf figure leaped onto the road on all fours, she opened the door and threw out the shotgun and tire iron as the beast charged with glowing gold eyes. Two seconds later, her wolf fled the cab, but by the time she’d drop-rolled to the ground she was all woman; naked, ornery, and then up again, going for the gun.
Anticipating her move, the beast sailed over the truck. Sasha went down on one knee, held the shot steady, and fired.
The blast from the truck caught the beast midair and in the gut. Entrails splattered the road, the line of trees, and stunk to high heaven. Her target might have been down, but she wasn’t leaving that to chance. Tire iron in one fist, pump shotgun in the other, she ran to where the beast lay beneath the burning flipped-over vehicle.
There was no time for emotion. She had to do what she had to do. The Max Hunter she’d known had died within the shell of his inner beast. Casting away the shotgun, she used both hands to raise the tire iron above her head. One of the beast’s eyes eerily rolled open to blankly stare at her. She used that as her cue to ram the tire iron through its huge skull.
Only then did she walk away, pick up her cast-off weapon, and puke. This was so much worse than Rod’s death on so many levels. There weren’t enough shadows to hide her tears as she watched the Werewolf carcass burn with a shotgun in her grip.
Another pair of golden eyes fifty yards away and a low snarl jerked her attention from the charred remains that were crumbling to ash. On her mark it was a race to the lodge. There was another one, a smaller one! It was charging straight for her. She had to get inside before it did to find the artillery stash. But she could feel it flanking her, its wolf in the shadows easily outrunning her human form. If she dropped the shotgun, she could change to she-Shadow—but she was no match for one of the beasts as a wolf.
A sudden invisible collision knocked her out of her shadow run and to the ground hard. The shotgun clattered to the road. A huge black wolf with the beginning of a Werewolf transformation and a very familiar scent signature snatched her by the leg with a human fist and yanked her toward him. Her she-Shadow came up fighting, canines bared, snapping at his groin when he went up on hind legs, but he backed up from her feral onslaught. Then a whoosh sound made them glimpse a figure that had entered the battle—it all happened in milliseconds.
The beast that was on her stumbled backward, wailing as something like an arrowhead dug into its shoulder. It clutched the wound site with its left hand and began scrabbling at it, then dropped to its knees. Seeing an opening, she circled him, prepared to lunge, until she saw what it had yanked out of its shoulder and who had put it there with a bow and arrow.
Another hypodermic needle hit the creature in the neck at the jugular. That last shot was delivered by an elderly man with tears in his eyes. The bewildered expression on the beast’s face gave Sasha pause . . . as did the warm brown eyes that normalized as he fell forward spread-eagle in the middle of the dark road.
Chapter 9
“Some full moon, hmmm? Lovely shade of aquamarine tinting it,” Francois remarked with a toothy grin. He walked around the half-dazed creature before him and then covered his nose with his hanky. “You really must do something about your hygiene when you transform, Dexter. This is just awful.”
Dexter lunged at the Vampire. “Do we have a deal or not?” he growled.
Francois easily sidestepped the aggressive move. His gaze then narrowed to a withering stare and his voice dropped to a lethal, hissing whisper. “Do not let the velvet and lace fool you, mon ami. In your condition and at my age as an undead royal, I could snatch your heart out before you could toss back your wretched head to howl.”
“Do . . . we . . . have . . . a deal?” Dexter snarled, panting out the question as his jaw began to elongate.
“Since you cannot even control your shape-shifts, perhaps we could have this conversation another evening?” Francois retorted with disdain.
“Or another day,” Dexter growled, unfurling his growing form to block Francois’s leave.
“You dare threaten me with a daylight tomb invasion?” Francois reared back, instantly materialized a kidskin glove in his hand, and struck Dexter across the face before tossing it on the ground.
The two entities squared off and Dexter smiled.
“You might want to pick up your glove. You don’t want to throw down the gauntlet too soon.”
With a sneer, Dexter swept the buttery soft glove from the graveyard floor and flung it at Francois, who caught it with one hand.
“My Vampire friend, need I remind you that, unlike any other species that walks the planet, our noses can find you. That’s why full moons make you boys so nervous and why you hate the Werewolves so. Because that’s when we come alive. That’s when we’re on the prowl. Hybrids like me can wipe out your biggest food competitor . . . and at the end, doesn’t it always come down to the most primal aspects of life—food, territory, mating privileges, hierarchy on the food chain?” Dexter chuckled and a low, rough sound exited his deformed snout. “Don’t look so put off. Surely an entity as old as you remembers the fundamentals. Civilization hasn’t washed that primal directive out of your cold, dead DNA yet, I’m sure.”
Francois’s lip curled. “What is running through my DNA is revulsion for—”
“Careful, careful,” Dexter said, baiting his opponent. “I might become offended. I’m not your problem. This isn’t between mutated Shadow Wolves and Vampires, the original battle has always been between you and your oldest arch rivals in the underworld—purebred Werewolves.”
Dexter began walking in a slow, threatening circle. “Shadow Wolves have never polluted the human blood stream. Our bites and scratches do not enter the human system and turn them into infected Werewolves. The demon-infected members of the wolf breed attack and eat humans and cause public alarm, further poaching on what you perceive as the inalienable right to human blood. So, be clear on who your true enemy is . . . and now, in this state, your enemy has become our delicacy.”
“Then don’t you forget,” Francois sneered, “that we, Vampiri, are blood specialists. And don’t ever forget your place. We are the only ones who can possibly slip past the security of a human paranormal military installation, or mind-daze a weak sentry. Only we can duplicate a human’s body with such exactness that we can pass their retina scans or any other technology. Even with that, now that they’ve been breeched once, the humans will have put precautions in place that give us pause.”
“We had a deal!”
Francois looked at Dexter and snarled. “We had a discussion. Previously, we had a deal—which you rogue Shadows reneged on.”
“You know that we still have enough toxin to sell to the highest human bidder on the military black market—enough that could make us extremely wealthy with resource perks that we’d be sure involved daylight tomb raids.” Dexter smirked. “What human doesn’t want immortality without the daylight and blood hunger handicap?” He leaned against a grave marker and raked Francois with his gaze. “What if Werewolves became more plentiful from the toxic military experiments in foreign nations, while they employed a small army of very strong Shadows to daylight hunt and capture Vampires to experiment on?”
“I would be very, very concerned if this unsubtle threat were not coming from a junky
,” Francois said evenly, carefully folding his glove into his breast pocket. “Before you cry wolf under this flawless, moonlit sky, I will advise you to remember that we’re your only hope of getting to whatever stash of the toxin you need to shoot up with, and we’re the only ones that know how to . . . shall we say, drain a body while keeping it alive to produce more blood so that you can get your sweet Shadow Wolf blood antidote. Don’t threaten me.”
Dexter’s gnarled canines glistened in the bright moonlight as the Vampire stared at him with venom in his eyes. “My infected Shadow brothers are single-minded. They want more of the product in exchange for our thinning the ranks of Werewolves . . . but we won’t forget the disrespect delivered by a Vampire if things don’t work out the way we’d discussed. So don’t fuck with me. Before I left the Shadow country, as future security dictated, I infected enough brothers to have a pack of my own. And do you think I just came down here for Mardi Gras?”
Dexter leaned close to Francois’s face and snarled again with a low chuckle. “There’s enough infected Shadows down here to overturn whatever graves Hurricane Katrina didn’t wash away and open to the sun. New Orleans has more hidden Shadows than you can know.”
Francois nodded with a blank expression and watched the deformed creature lope away from him. Etienne silently materialized beside Francois and both Vampires kept their gaze on Dexter’s retreating form.
“So, my performance was bon?” Francois’s mouth turned up at the corners, giving Etienne a wicked smile without looking at him.
Etienne’s gaze stayed with the retreating wolf but his sinister smile was for Francois. “Très bon . . . merci. Très, très bon.”
Sasha stood, numbly gaping, adrenaline and disbelief battling within her, as she watched Silver Hawk calmly approach the wolf on the ground. He cloaked his grandson with his bearskin coat and then tossed her his doe-skin shirt without looking at her. Sasha caught it with one hand. Then he calmly drew an Indian blanket over his shoulders, staring at the fallen with ancient eyes. Watching the elderly Ute Indian work was nearly an out-of-body experience. His dignified carriage seemed weary but not broken.
Despite his incalculable age, he fearlessly rolled the wounded creature into the coat and, still stooping beside it, took in a deep but measured breath, hoisted over two hundred pounds of dead weight onto his shoulder, stood slowly with a grunt, and then lifted his chin and began walking toward the lodge.
She extracted the gore-stained tire iron from the ashes by the wreck, then followed Silver Hawk’s steady, plodding gait, witnessing what seemed to be the old man’s former muscular structure come alive under his burden. A deep V of sweat made his blue and gray plaid flannel shirt that he’d worn beneath the doe-skin cling to him and she could almost envision his power and strength when he’d been in the full bloom of his youth, knowing now where Hunter had inherited his.
Silently they entered the gravel road courtyard of the lodge, yet her eyes remained transfixed on the body Silver Hawk hauled. She stayed close to him, understanding without words that he didn’t want her help in carrying his burden, but would accept her defense if attacked by another beast. It was an odd understanding, indeed.
Remorse filled her as they slowly made their way up the front steps of the main building, knowing full well that she might have to break the old man’s heart and exterminate his grandson right before his eyes. No parent should have to bury their child; no grandparent their grandchild—and neither should have to witness their execution. This was so far-flung from the natural order of things that all she could do was keep her gaze steady on the body Silver Hawk carried and pray that it didn’t twitch. Her nerves were so wire taut that the slightest move would have possibly been enough to make her drive the tire iron through Hunter’s skull on sheer reflex.
Although total darkness engulfed them once inside, save the blue-white shards of moonlight, Silver Hawk navigated past the destroyed registration desk, turned-over lobby furniture and splintered pine floorboards, through a massive dining room that was now a wreck. Cold air unnaturally whipped through what should have been a warm, cozy space. She peered at the shattered glass and wood sections that had obviously once been large French doors that led out to a pine deck for summer breezes and al fresco dining.
It had taken only a few seconds while passing through for her gaze to absorb enough impressions to reconstruct the scene. A beast had entered the building through the side deck doors, run amok through the dining room, turning over tables and chairs, searching for something or someone, and then had barreled through the establishment heading for the front doors where maybe it heard the sound of Crow Shadow’s truck . . . then it had exploded the front doors off the hinges as it came out to attack.
Sasha kept walking, following the resolute old man before her who carried an immeasurable burden. She watched him go to the chef’s center-island butcher’s block in the middle of the huge, industrial-size kitchen and bend one knee. Very carefully he slid the weight he’d been carrying off his shoulder, allowing the body wrapped in the coat to hit the table surface with a gentle thud. Then, with the coat at the fallen wolf’s back, Silver Hawk quickly covered the body with the blanket that had been on his shoulders, almost as though performing a silent ritual in his mind. The care the old man took put tears in her eyes and as she looked away she saw the arsenal he’d amassed in the kitchen.
Pump shotguns, semiautomatics; the distinctive scent of silver hung in the air so thickly that it put a metallic taste on the back of her tongue. The heavy silver saturation had to be caused by an airborne or liquid version of it . . . silver nitrate, colloidal silver, silver shrapnel in fine dust flakes, something. No wonder the beast hadn’t come back here.
Her attention was divided between scouring the environment and watching Silver Hawk slowly check Hunter for injuries beneath the blanket. Finally, he pulled the blanket back by degrees. The muscles in her arms, back, and legs tensed in readiness to spring forward with the tire iron, lest Hunter wake up not himself.
But rather than witnessing a half-transformed beast, Hunter was in his human form, eyelids rapidly fluttering as though his mind were trapped in some horrible dream.
Again Sasha glimpsed the weapons that were collected on the stainless-steel drain board. “How bad is he?” she finally asked, moving closer as Silver Hawk inspected both arrowhead wound sites.
“There are fatigues and long johns . . . socks, boots in the cabinet,” Silver Hawk said in a quiet voice, motioning to the far wall without looking at her. “The worst of it has passed. Dress. You will not need your wolf again tonight.”
Although she obliged his request, she kept her eyes on Hunter as she quickly crossed the room, selected warm clothes from the stash that was available, and dressed in a flash. Until she pulled on the heavy wool socks, she hadn’t completely realized just how cold she’d been. A hard shiver shook her until her teeth chattered, and she gratefully slipped on a pair of hiking boots.
There was no need for her to say a word as she passed the elderly man who’d extracted an ancient medicine rattle from his jacket pocket when she’d offered it back to him. He declined the jacket and simply covered Hunter’s nudity with it, and then began a low hymn in a language she didn’t understand. She gathered a nine millimeter and several clips to stash in her waistband with equal purpose. No matter what Silver Hawk hoped, or whatever she prayed, she wasn’t convinced that the danger had passed.
“Give me his amulet,” Silver Hawk commanded, reaching backward for it, still keeping his focus on Hunter.
Sasha complied, but sensing what the old man was about to do, she also held Hunter in her gun sight.
Ever so slowly, with his voice escalating in the chant, Silver Hawk lowered the amulet to Hunter’s chest. The moment it made contact with Hunter’s skin, he arched hard and his eyes rolled back in his skull, exposing only the whites. Undaunted, Silver Hawk dropped the talisman and increased the rattling chant, and then put a hand in his pants pocket to quickly extract a fi
stful of shimmering dust.
Sasha watched in horror as the elderly man rimmed Hunter’s body with the silvery concoction. If that didn’t sit him up and turn him straight insane Werewolf, she couldn’t imagine what else would.
Weapons at the ready, she kept a clear shot aimed at Hunter’s skull. But the second Hunter went into a hard convulsion, Silver Hawk threw his head back, howled, and then looped the silver chain of the amulet over Hunter’s head. The most difficult part of it was watching the suffering.
Unintelligible roars of a wolf in pain to the very human cries of a man dying a thousand deaths made her sip in shallow breaths and barely release them. Tears leaked down Silver Hawk’s weathered cheeks, his pain no less profound than the necessary torture he inflicted upon his grandson. Yet witnessing Hunter’s purging made her bones hurt as unnatural joints popped and cracked, twisting his limbs in and out of the wretched Werewolf half-transition, broke his jaw, and then realigned it—the wails of agony he released sounded like he was burning alive in a molten pit of silver.
Torn between going to him and putting him out of his misery, she was rooted to the floor where she stood, completely obedient to the old man’s nonverbal cues. But when Hunter began calling her by name, if it weren’t for the old man’s steady hand signal to back off, she would have honored Hunter’s request. She knew what he wanted, she would have begged for that, too.
Soon blood began leaking from his skin and her gaze became a feral question in her eyes as it ricocheted between Hunter and Silver Hawk.
“The demons will reclaim that which is theirs, bite by bite,” the old man said in a gravelly voice. “Part of him is beyond the demon doors and he must survive it alone.”