The Stroke of Midnight: A Supernatural New Year's Anthology
Page 29
The bars closed behind me. My court date would come sooner or later, but due to the nature of my offenses I'd never be able to afford the bail. Neither would my wife, wherever she was. The phone in the holding cell was even older than the one in the firehouse back in Esperanza. But I was far from there now. I had run a long way–first to find Selena, then to make it here to Carolina. The red radio in my pocket had taken turns showing me Cole Porter, Chick Korea, Paul Desmond, Charles Mingus.
I dialed the number I had committed to memory and held the heavy, antique prison phone up to my ear.
A lady answered the phone. "Carolina Fire and Rescue."
"I'm looking for Davy Hackett," I said, sure that the woman who answered the phone could hear the smile that went along with my voice. "Yes I can wait," I said.
Finally a distracted sounding man with a deep voice said, "Captain Hackett."
"Davy! It's Glen Proctor. From the program. Remember me? We're the last two, Davy. Did you know that?"
There was a pause, a sigh. "Glen, what can I help you with?"
"You ever listen to John Coltrane, Davy?" I said.
"Is there something you need, Glen?"
"Hey, Come down to the county jail, all right? Can you do that for me? This is my one phone call you know. I need to talk to you."
"Oh shit," he said. "What did you get arrested for?"
"Nothing, man. Just get down here, will you?"
"Sure, Glen," he said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Take your time, I've got nowhere to go," I laughed. I laughed, but there was silence on the other end. I hoped it wasn't too late for Davy. "You're still taking them aren't you?" I said. "The pills."
Tempting the Moon
Susan Illene
"Hey, Mel?"
I didn't look up at Emily as I continued doing sit-ups. Just a hundred more to go. "Yeah?"
"I sort of have a problem."
She was almost sixteen. She seemed to always have some kind of crisis going on—and those were just the ones I found out about. "What's the problem?"
"I, uh, seduced a werewolf and got him caught in a bear trap," she rushed out.
Fifty sit-ups would have to do. I sat up and ran my gaze over her. She had scratches on her face and hands as if she'd been running through the woods.
"Maybe you should repeat that." I rubbed at my ears. "Because I could have sworn you just said you seduced a werewolf."
She shifted from foot to foot. "It was payback. Hunter broke into my locker at school and did something really embarrassing."
"What did he do?" I hoped it wasn't something that would require me to kill him. He wasn't eighteen yet. I really needed to wait until after he'd reached the legal age to do something that extreme.
"He rigged my locker so that when I opened it a song played loud enough for everyone to hear."
Well, it could have been worse. He could have filled it with snakes or spiders or something even more horrifying. With a werewolf, the possibilities were endless.
"Which song?" I asked.
She pushed back some of her long, brown hair behind one ear. "Cooler Than Me by Mike Posner."
Ouch. He must still be upset with her for breaking his nose and kneeing him in the balls back on Valentine's Day when he'd tried to crash her party. The song was sort of romantic in a weird kind of way, though.
"How did he manage to do that?"
She shrugged. "Not sure. He had his iPod in there with some speakers and I think he had a remote in his hand. That must've been how he turned it on."
"What did you do?"
"Everyone was looking at me and laughing." Emily's face turned red. "It was right at the end of school so I shoved everything into my backpack and took off. He's been calling me ever since wanting his stuff back."
I wanted to be angry with the guy, but nothing he'd done so far had really hurt her. Just minor pranks like this and sending her badly written poems. Oh, and that time he showed up outside our house on a full moon with a bloody rabbit between his teeth. He'd left that for her as a gift, though Emily hadn't found it very amusing.
"Is that why you've been shutting your cell phone off every time it rings lately?" I lifted my brows.
Emily appeared to be a cheerful and open person, but if you tried to dig too deep she'd put up defensive walls. Life had already damaged her pretty badly by the time I found her and it was taking a while for her to open up. I tried not to push her too hard, hoping she'd learn to trust me and talk things out when she was ready.
"Yeah." She glanced back at the door. "I don't know how he got my number."
"So you decided to seduce him and get him caught in a bear trap? Is he okay?"
Emily looked down and stared at her feet. "That's sort of the problem. He's still caught in it and now he's turned into a wolf so I can't get him free."
It was the night before a full moon. If he bit us, it would turn us into werewolves. Emily and I might be from a rare race of sensors, but we could be changed into something else. There weren't enough of our kind left to risk that. Not to mention we enjoyed our immunity to magic and being able to sense any supernaturals near us.
"Okay." I stood up and walked over to my cell phone. "We need to call Derrick. He's the Alpha and he'll be able to deal with it."
Emily rushed over to my side. "Do we have to? I don't want anyone knowing about this, Mel."
"I think it's a little too late for that." I held the phone to my ear.
It didn't even ring and instead went straight to voicemail. I thumbed through the contact list looking for the next highest werewolf in the pack. How sad my life had become that most of the names I skimmed past were supernaturals of some variety, including vampires, nephilim, witches, and even a fairy and pixie. There was a time when I'd hidden from sups in favor of anonymity and safety. Then a little over a year ago that had all changed.
"Damn. None of the weres are answering." I glared at the phone as if it was the cause of all my problems.
Emily's anxious expression transformed into one of relief.
"They're probably out on a run. It's been dark for a couple of hours," she said.
This was Alaska in late December. It was dark most of the time, which made it ideal for werewolves who could only shift at night.
I ran through my mental list of people who could help. "We can't get Nik or Kariann either since they're down in New Orleans until tomorrow night."
They had to be back by then since Nik, the master vampire for the area, was having a big New Year's Eve party. I was invited, but I hadn't promised I'd be there. Too many people asking questions. They all wanted to know about the nephilim who'd laid a claiming mark on me and then disappeared nearly ten months ago. I knew where he was—a place I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy—but I'd been ordered not to tell.
"You're not going to call Micah, are you?" Emily asked.
"Um, no. The longer Lucas is gone, the more Micah acts like an over-protective jerk." Not to mention he was Lucas' twin and it hurt to look at him and be reminded that I wouldn't see his brother for a very long time.
"Well, um, Hunter is still stuck in that trap. Maybe if we work together and use fairy dust to freeze him, we can get him out," Emily suggested.
It wasn't a bad idea. We'd have to plan it carefully since fairy dust wouldn't hold him for long, but with enough of it we might be able to get him loose without endangering ourselves. I'd have to see how and where he was caught before I could make any more plans.
"Do you have any fairy dust here?" I asked.
Emily nodded. "Yeah, up in my room."
"Go get it, and put some thicker clothes on while you're at it."
She'd definitely dressed to seduce in that low-cut shirt and tight jeans. When she went out earlier she'd worn a heavy jacket, or else I would have noticed. The last I'd checked, the weather was negative twenty degrees and forecasted to get even colder. If we were going to be outside long rescuing a werewolf, we needed to be prepared for it.
***
We pulled up to an old cabin where Emily had talked Hunter into meeting her. It was just off the highway, but far enough from Fairbanks to make it ideal for local teenagers to hang out. An old beat-up truck I assumed belonged to the werewolf was parked in front of it.
"Did Candace bring you here?" That's who she'd left with earlier. Emily couldn't drive by herself yet.
"Um, yeah. I told her I wouldn't be gone long, so she waited down the road for me."
I parked and we got out of the jeep. My senses told me the werewolf was about a hundred meters behind the cabin.
"How did he end up back there?"
Emily looked away. "Well, I kind of let him kiss me for a minute before rubbing wolfsbane in his face. When he chased after me, I panicked. The woods just looked like a good place to get away from him."
"You pissed off a werewolf and thought running into the woods would help? You're lucky it wasn't you who got caught in the trap." I wanted to say more, but it wouldn't do any good to go into a full-out lecture now. We had to rescue Hunter first.
I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder. It was full of supplies that might come in handy—including duct tape, extra flashlights, a first aid kit, and various tools.
"Sorry, Mel. I just wanted to pay him back for what he did." My senses could pick up on the emotions of anyone close by and they told me she was remorseful, but I'd still have to punish her after this was over. I wondered if grounding her until she was eighteen would be too drastic.
"Let's go. We'll talk more about this later."
Emily trudged behind me as we carefully picked our way through the dense woods, using our flashlights to help avoid any obstacles. It was slow going. The trees were packed closely together and we had to wade through deep snow. I followed the trail where Emily and Hunter had run through earlier, but my feet sank with every step. Growing up in California had not prepared me for this, and I didn't think I'd ever fully get used to life this far north. At least I'd had the sense to put on some heavy boots and thick pants.
As we neared the werewolf, I could feel his rage and pain. His emotions were wild and chaotic like an animal's. As we got within view of him, my senses proved me right. Hunter might have chased after Emily as a human, but he'd reverted to his wolf form and stayed that way ever since. The moonlight filtering through the trees illuminated his gray fur, so it was hard to miss him. I didn't want to get him more upset, though, so I kept my flashlight pointed at the ground.
I waved Emily back and stepped as close to him as I dared—which was about ten feet. There was only one approach to his position. Someone had built up the area around the trap with fallen tree limbs and other vegetation so that there was only one way to get to it. That space was rather narrow. It was going to be a real pain in the ass trying to get the werewolf free.
Hunter growled and I took a step back. He wasn't quite as big as a fully grown wolf, but he still looked intimidating with those pointy white fangs. My, my, young teenage boy. What big teeth you have!
"How did he get caught in there?" I asked in a low tone, looking back at Emily.
She should have known better than to run into someplace like that. When you're fleeing from someone, you tend to stick with open ground and not head into obstacles that would slow you down.
She shivered as she met my eyes. "I don't know. I went around it and he must have tried to leap over it."
Even in human form, werewolves could run faster and jump farther than normal people.
I sighed. "It's not going to be easy getting him out. How much fairy dust do you have?"
Emily dug the bag out of her pocket and held it up.
"How did you get that much?" There was nearly a fistful of fairy dust in there. It could down a whole werewolf pack—temporarily.
"Felisha has to release some of it every day or she gets itchy. She's been letting me collect it in case of an emergency." Emily glanced over at Hunter. The guilt in her eyes plain to see. "I think this counts."
I didn't know how fairies "released" their dust. I'd been working at Felisha's herb shop for over a year, but she still hid a lot of things from me. If she'd revealed any of her secrets to Emily, the teenager wasn't talking.
"Okay, well, I hope you're prepared to keep sprinkling that stuff in his eyes every thirty seconds. I'm going to have to get really close to him to get that trap off and it's going to take awhile."
She nodded. "I can do it."
I turned back to the werewolf. He'd given up snarling at us and started gnawing at his leg. Ugh, it'd take him at least a week to grow that back if he chewed it off and school would be starting again soon. He'd have to miss classes since there would be no explaining to humans how he could heal that fast. If we could get him free with only the damage he had now, he might be okay in time.
"Give me the dust." I held my hand out. "I'm going to hit him with it first to get things ready and then you can take over from there."
Emily dropped it into my palm. I took a knee and dug through my backpack, using my teeth to hold the flashlight. Thankfully the duct tape was close to the top. Of the many purposes it could serve, using it as a make-shift muzzle was about to be another one. We had to minimize our own danger first before we could help the werewolf. Six years of being in the army had taught me to reduce risk as much as possible when danger was unavoidable.
I zipped the bag closed and handed it to Emily. "Hold onto this and stay here. I'll tell you when you can come closer."
As sensors, we couldn't perform magic. Our blood, if used fresh, could even negate it, but fairy dust acted all on its own and only needed us to toss it at our target. I crept up to the werewolf, avoiding his gaze—that would only get him more riled up. He'd stopped gnawing on his leg as soon as he'd heard my feet crunch in the snow. Now he was putting all of his dark-eyed concentration on me. I waited until I was about a handful of paces from him before flinging the dust.
My senses let me know the moment it activated and froze his body. Moving quickly, I knelt beside him and set the flashlight off to the side, positioning it where I needed it. Then I tossed a bit more of the dust in his eyes before working the tape free to start wrapping it around his muzzle. I made about ten loops around him in rapid succession. A final pinch of dust ensured I was ready for Emily.
"Bring over the bag." I motioned her with my hand to move quickly.
She gave it to me in exchange for the fairy dust. Her teeth were chattering. I wasn't sure if it was the cold or her fear causing it, but I didn't want to keep her out here any longer than necessary. Pushing the wolf onto his side, I got a good look at the trap. Some barbaric asshole had decided to use the heavy-duty kind with sharp teeth. It was digging deep into his leg through the remnants of the pants he'd been wearing before changing shape. There were more humane—if you could call it that—traps, but this one was designed to really hurt its victim.
There was a time when I wouldn't have known what to do, but since moving to Alaska I'd learned a lot of new things. Particularly because I had a shape-shifter cat at home who'd gotten caught in a snare trap a few months ago. Sable roamed a large area of territory whenever she went out and it took hours, even with my sensing abilities, to find her when she didn't come home at her usual time.
Derrick—the local Alpha werewolf—had made a point after that of teaching me all the different kinds of traps out there so I wouldn't have to rely on him if it happened again. Sable had to suffer for a while when I found her because I hadn't had a clue how to get her free. If she could have turned into a smaller breed of feline, she might have gotten out of it, but her injuries made it impossible for her to change. I'd considered bringing her with me tonight and decided against it since she probably would have aggravated the werewolf even more.
One good thing came out of the incident; I now knew how to open traps. This one was going to take special tools, but I'd packed every kind I thought I might need in my bag. After checking to make sure Emily was keeping the werewolf frozen, I moved ov
er his body and cleared some snow away so I could reach the springs on either side of the trap. They'd take C-clamps to press them back down.
I dug one clamp out of my bag and positioned it over the spring. Then I tightened it down as fast as I could until it couldn't go any further. After that I took out another C-clamp and did the same on the other side of the trap. All that was left was to use a crowbar to pry it open.
Emily was still tossing fairy dust in the wolf's eyes and had begun murmuring to it in a soothing voice. Sometimes it was easy to forget there was a real person in the animal's body. I could sense her fear, but she was doing a good job of setting it aside in favor of keeping the werewolf calm. Someday, she'd grow up to be one tough woman.
Taking a mini-crowbar out of my bag, I wedged it into the trap's narrow opening. It had crushed Hunter's leg badly and didn't leave much room, but there was enough for what I needed to do. Using strength a mortal woman like me shouldn't have, I pried the trap open and pulled it away from the wolf's back leg. Then I set it well out of the way.
A wave of relief came over me. The first part of our mission was done. We just had to figure out what to do with the werewolf now that he was free. I grabbed all my tools and shoved them back into the bag first before crossing over to Emily's side.
"The second he comes out of this, he's going to attack," I told her. He might not be able to move, but he was still fully aware of his surroundings. I could sense the animal side of him and his emotions were ripping claws into my psyche. Emily had to be feeling the same thing.
"What're we going to do? There isn't much dust left." She dangled the almost empty bag.
I glanced at my backpack. There were many useful things in it, but the one thing I didn't have was rope. Next time—though I hoped there wasn't one—I'd have to make sure I brought some. For now, I'd have to pray the duct tape would buy us time if we hobbled his front legs with it.
"Keep sprinkling the dust. As soon as I tell you, run like hell to the jeep."