A grinning face appeared in the busted driver's side window. It clung to the door and snapped at her shoulder, narrowly missing. The wolf on the dash snatched at her face again. Varney grabbed it by the wrist and yanked it through the glass. Skin peeled away. Shards of glass gouged deep furrows into fur and flesh. It howled and kicked. The vampire pulled it all the way into the cab and hurled it through the passenger window. The thing on Bullet's side started to crawl through. Bullet punched it. As hard as she could, she planted her fist on its snout. Once. Twice. Three times. The werewolf let go and fell back through the window.
Varney smiled at her. "I enjoy your company, Ms. Boulet."
The truck rocked again as they went over a curb and stopped in the middle of Pilgrim Road. Bullet looked back. Mangled werewolves lay in their wake, but were already rising. In the back, coming up out of the darkness, was the gray form of Gideon. His bloody maw split open and he roared. The playful arrogance was gone. He raced towards them. Bullet gunned the engine and steered the truck north towards the interstate. They'd be to the army base in no time. She looked down at the blood-stained CB radio. Once they were clear, she'd let the base know that trouble was behind them.
"Boulet. . . "
Bullet looked up at Varney. His eyes gleamed with something she hadn't yet seen in him. Fear. Up the interstate, a swarm of headlights approached. More than she could count. "It must be the police," she said.
"It's not the police."
The headlights didn't move in pairs. They were single lights, the lights of motorcycles. Bullet stopped the truck in the middle of the road.
"Turn around," Varney said, his voice barely a whisper.
The pack of motorcycles sped up as they saw the truck. And in the lights of the highway just outside of town, Bullet could just make them out. More of the Goats. Dozens of them. Some were fully human with shotguns and rifles leaning on their shoulders as they road. Others were wolfen things on the backs of Harleys and again something blossomed in Bullet's brain, a crazy punch of delirium that she wanted to embrace. She wanted to get lost in it. She wanted to be crazy.
"Turn around!" Varney yelled.
Bullet whipped the wheel and turned the truck in the other direction. The wolves from the hospital were catching up. They were in the road, dashing towards them on all fours. Behind them, more headlights. Over the deep puttering of the truck's engine, she could hear it - a sound like a train, full of hunger and rage and bellowing.
"They brought their friends, Boulet. Go!"
Bullet went. Down an alley through the center of town that spilled out onto a dirt road she didn't know the name of. The smoke was thick here, too. On the horizon, it wafted across the flatlands towards town. Bullet headed towards it and pushed the truck to its limit. The engine whined and the needle sank into the red. Behind them, the two hordes converged in the street and gave chase. She guessed anywhere from fifty to seventy five of them. Bullet and Varney passed a faded wooden sign that sat between two withered yucca plants.
THE YUCCA VALLEY MOBILE HOME PARK
A TRIBES COMMUNITY SINCE 1972
A woman's body with the face missing was crucified across it. A werewolf was hunched over it. The thing gnawed at the corpse's flank. It looked up into the headlights as they passed. Its face was filthy with gore.
"They're everywhere," Bullet said.
And they were. They ran through the shadows of the cacti, just off the side of the road. Bullet caught glimpses of them in flickering firelight. They feasted. They lay around in lazy groups, sated.
The smoke became too thick as they got closer to the trailers and Bullet had to slow down. She downshifted and narrowly dodged an old Buick that sat in the middle of the road. The mutilated body of its driver dangled out of the open door. Trailers burned. Carnage. Blood covered every surface. Entire families lay in the road, cut down as they tried to flee. Werewolves with remains clenched in their jaws pulled and tore at the flesh. It was an orgy.
Bullet stared straight ahead. She went a little faster, as fast as she dared, and tried not to look. Then the smell hit her. Burnt meat. The copper scent of blood. Melting plastic. She breathed through her mouth.
They came to the edge of the trailer park. The werewolves there were too glutted or too surprised to attack them. They just watched the wrecker drive by. But that wouldn't last. Bullet crashed through the chain link fence at the end and out into the field. Ahead loomed the blue shadow of the Huachuca Mountains. She thought of Nathan for the first time in hours and her heart sank.
Something he had said nagged at her, something from this morning. It was a quiet flicker in her memory and to get at it, she kept having to push away the vision of his ruined body being dragged through the parking lot. The flicker grew. Something about the mountains. And then she had it.
Behind them, silhouetted by firelight, the werewolves filled the field. On bike and on foot, they came. The things leaped over downed trees and tore through the brush. The truck bounced and the suspension groaned with each bump. An axle would snap if they didn't get stuck on a rock. Varney saw the realization on her face.
"Do you have a plan, Boulet?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
As the truck continued to shake itself apart, Bullet raced for the foothills and scanned the brush for a long-abandoned dirt road.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gideon breathed deep as he ran and all of the smells came to him and they were good. Cooking flesh and blood and sweat and burning. The exhaust from the truck scorched his nostrils and his own hair was singed and there was a glorious rage in him that rushed through his meat. The rage made him want to run and hunt. Run and hunt. His teeth ached like he needed to chew on something and his fingers tingled like he needed to choke something and he thought of the woman and how lean and toned she was and how he wanted to dominate her to make her scream and finally cry and yelp and roll over to expose her soft belly to him so she would know that he was the leader and that a bitch like her was gristle between his teeth.
Gideon ran and ignored the thorns and bristles that stabbed at his paws. And the teeth ached they ached so good. They wanted to be soothed by warm blood and his throat wouldn't be dry and the warm blood would wash over him and he would look up at the moon and scream and scream and she would be laid open on the ground her guts exposed to the moon and she would scream and they would scream and the rest of the pack would scream. YES.
He would have her. He smelled her. There she was. Wrapped in metal and engine heat and leaving clouds of exhaust and dust behind her. He reached for it. Through all of the other smells all of the other cooking meat and smoke and sweat, he caught the smell, her specific odor, on the wind and followed it and it was a hot smell that told him she was angry and tired and scared. But it also said that it was her and that was a smell Gideon would never forget. And her smell was with another smell and Gideon whimpered and felt white rage wash through him again. It was that smell. The old smell. The dead-but-not-dead smell that smelled like one of his brothers but something not one of his brothers. It was older and scarier and to Gideon it was darkness. It was him the one he remembered from so long ago. It was the Romanian cocksucker. Vlad. Vlad. Vlad! With his Judas smile and the darkness he carried with him. And something deep in Gideon's bones ignited and he remembered how he hated the Romanian and how his father hated the Romanian and how the pack hated the Romanian and they had him in their hands for the first time in decades. They had him. And now Vlad, proud, proud Vlad, was running and the running excited Gideon. He couldn't smell anything on the Romanian motherfucker but darkness and rot. Not fear or anger or exhaustion. Darkness and rot.
Gideon ran faster. His pack swarmed around him and he could hear teeth gnashing and hungry growls and hundreds of padded feet keeping pace with him through the desert. The truck pulled away into the dust and smoke, but the mountains were coming and Gideon knew there was nowhere left to go. They would catch them and he thought of jumping onto the truck so many of his pack and his
wolves that the truck would roll to the ground and he could pull them out of the truck and they would have a fun game with all of them.
He would even eat the Romanian. He would eat his head and it didn't matter how spoiled and old it tasted he would relish it and he would tell them all that Gideon was the king of the night and they would whimper before him.
He passed his brothers. They gave him room and let him take to the front of the pack and he could smell the scents of the mountains that fresh wild rush and he could smell their age and feel the cool air that drifted down from them and then there it was.
The truck. The truck!
***
The truck sat abandoned at the mouth of a cave on the mountainside. The granite was exposed here, a wound in the earth. The truck sat before the gaping hole and looked like the cave might just swallow it up into its own darkness. It was still warm when the pack came across it. Its engine ticked as it sat in the overgrown whitehorn scrub. There had been a road here once, but the Coronado Forest was starting to reclaim it. Up the side of the hill were mixed oak and higher up, thin Apache pines.
The wolves slowed as they came to the truck. They prowled around it, ready for something to erupt. The doors were left open. The inside was wet with blood and still hot with the scents of the woman and the Romanian. And the smell lead them into the darkness of the cave.
Gideon looked back as his army collected around him. Some of them lapped at the blood in the seat. Others stared at Gideon, their breaths rasping with exertion from the run. They caught up to him and they waited. He let it build. He let them catch their breath and he fingered the leash, letting them know that the hunt was about to continue, that the bloody prize at the end was close.
Gideon threw back his head and let loose a bellow. It was a war cry. They knew it. They joined in and the chorus sent birds in the oaks and pines of the hills seeking a new place to rest for the night. Every animal in the forest scurried for shelter. There was a wave of fury and fangs coming.
Gideon plunged into the cave. The hordes of hell followed.
***
Varney moved through the darkness. The cool, dank air of the cave felt good on his skin. His vision dimmed in the pitch black. The moonlight stretched only so far and he was going quickly, farther and farther into the cave. He breathed deeply and focused. The shadows seemed to spark. They went from invisible black to dark grey then to shades of white. The darkness blossomed open to him, revealing everything. He could see again, even in the bowels of the cave. It was returning to him. He smiled. Even with the pack at his heels, he smiled. He was being hunted, yes, and had been hunted before. The indignity of it disgusted him. It enraged him. Except for tonight. Tonight was an exception. It was his homecoming. Even here, in the dusty guts of the desert, he began to feel young and vital again.
His limbs loosened and he felt himself grow lighter. Only the tips of his feet scraped across the rocks as he flew through the tunnels. They were laid out in a pattern, hewn from the granite and supported with rotting bits of lumber. Discarded tools, wire, lanterns, and lengths of rope were cast about. He flew past them all. Deeper.
Yes, let them come with him. Let them follow. Like the beasts they were, they thought they had him cornered. They would slaver and chase because they had no choice. That was what they were. And their dim animal urges would lead them right to him. He was thirsty, yes, but could go without feeding for days now that he had drank. He wanted more. He wanted so much more, but he didn't need more. No, now was the time for sport. Now was the time to remind the vucari why their entire bloodline hated and feared him. It was his night.
***
They poured into the caves. They moved through the cracks in the walls and ceilings. They scurried across the dirt floor. Scores of them. The pack moved with a singular purpose. The outside light of the moon was blotted out by gleaming eyes and masses of fur and claws. The engines of man and man's weapons were left outside. This was only the hunt. Panting and low, hungry growls. The patter of padded feet. The scrape of claws on bare stone.
It was no longer a group of wolves. It was The Pack. All of the fetters and trappings of the daylight were cast off and they moved as one blood. It was a torrent of horror through empty stone veins. Somewhere, the urge to kill, to eat, to draw blood, overcame them. It started with one - a howl - that spread throughout the rest of the body. It echoed, turning into a cacophony that followed the damned vampire down. Down.
***
Bullet heard the howls. She made herself as small as possible and somehow, even as the screams retreated into the bowels of the cave, they sounded worse. The contorted position she was in - squeezed into a tiny ball - made every shiver ache in her already battered muscles. The tension knotted up in her legs and arms and turned into cramps. The cramps throbbed and she coiled involuntarily. Her teeth ground as she willed herself not to stand. Not yet. She could still hear them and they might have left some behind to wait at the mouth of the cave, to make sure no one escaped.
How many would be there? Four? Five? One was enough. She was spent. There was no more fight in her. Not much. Just a spark. Just enough to keep her alive for a few more minutes. This one last thing . . .
Finally, the sounds were gone. The pack was too deep for her to hear. Her muscles screamed. She trembled and felt the beads of sweat dangling from her nose and stinging her eyes. As slowly as she could, she raised her free hand and lifted the lid to the toolbox. Moonlight. Only moonlight. No lupine eyes or endless fangs. The cool air slipped inside and mingled with the smells of grease and dirt. What felt like a claw hammer dug into her knees. As she rose, the metal lid squealed and the pile of tools she was laying on shifted with a rattle. In the small hours of the desert night, it must have echoed all the way back to the town. Or what was left of it. Bullet winced at the noise and at the pain of her joints bending after being crammed into the filthy toolbox mounted on the back of the wrecker.
She stepped onto the back platform of the tow truck. Abandoned motorcycles were scattered across the dirt road and even farther back into the scrub brush. None of the wolves had bothered to even stand them up. Bullet looked around. She was alone.
Immediately the adrenaline was back. It set everything inside her on fire and her stomach lurched with nerves. But she only stood there and shook. It wasn't the chill of the desert night or the cool sweat on her skin. It was a tremor from inside and she felt it trying to wreak havoc, trying to surge up from inside her and turn everything inside out. And she wanted to let it. She wanted to scream and collapse and cry, things she hadn't done since she was a child, since she vowed never to do that again. So she grabbed it. She caught the first sob in her throat and choked it off. She clenched her fists and dug her nails into her palms. Through gritted teeth, she took in a deep breath of cold air. The hot tears didn't come. They hovered just behind her eyes. And then she moved.
Bullet leaped down and jumped into the cab of the truck, barely noticing that most of the blood on the seats had been lapped up. The keys were still in the ignition. As she hid, as Varney plunged into the darkness of the cave, she had worried that the wolves would destroy the truck out of spite and shapeless rage. Or that they would easily smell her, huddled in the toolbox. But now she was free. Her fingers poised on the keys, ready to start the old truck. She looked back into the cave. Nothing moved. Down there was a battle and she thought for sure that Varney, in spite of his monstrous strength and speed, was now being ripped apart. They'd feast on him and they'd return for her. She had only minutes. In front of her, the flatlands between here and Tribes were empty. The highways were choked with smoke, but were dark. No headlights. No more werewolves or bikers with guns. She was free. She could leave now. Damn the plan.
Bullet bit her lip. She lowered her hand from the keys and waited. The tremors thrummed somewhere deep within her, but she bit back the fear. No. She had run from Phoenix, from the blunt sexism and casual threats of rape of the other police officers. She had run from her family and their
problems and her Goddamned father. But now? Now she was going to finish this. Now. No more running. She stared down at the radio and waited.
Come on, Varney. Hurry. Fucking hurry.
***
Gideon swept through the tunnels with the Pack behind him all around him and he felt their energy and it was that of the moon. It was the cold, white rush and the glow and the thrill of the hunt. The Romanian's scent was thick and he gagged on it. Death and rot and decay and arrogance and ancient stone and dust and bone. It clung to the back of his throat. He dove deeper into it, swimming in it and the others smelled it, too. They fueled each other with their fervor and they were one. The bloodlust was a giddiness now, that of dogs in heat, mounting and thrusting with abandon.
But the smell was so thick. It wasn't just the Romanian, no. It wasn't just Vlad. It was something else. It was something poisonous and burning. It singed the air and made his eyes water. Gideon squinted and kept running chasing howling. He kept running but his joints began to ache and his stomach curdled. Muscles tightened. Was he so old and tired now? It couldn't be daylight. The fun wasn't over yet. He could feel the sun throbbing, but far beneath the horizon. They had hours to run and hunt. Run and hunt. He could feel it in his blood.
But there was something else. It seeped into his blood, too. Was the Romanian trying to poison him? Or gas them out? Surely the old fuck knew that wouldn't work. Still, it clung to him and as he went deeper he watched his pack begin to slow. He saw it in their eyes. Golds and grays became bloodshot. Foam gathered around the lips and dropped in hot gobs on the cavern floor. The tunnels narrowed. The ceilings became lower as they rushed forward. They kept moving. Beside him, one black-furred whelp slipped and tumbled along the dusty floor. He yelped as the granite scraped his skin raw. Skin and fur and blood streaked the rock and they all looked at it dreamily as they ran by. A new rage simmered in Gideon's throat. Fucking Romanian tricks and the magic of the dead. Fucking lying, sorcerous Romanian whore!
The Black Goat Motorcycle Club Page 20