by Nene Adams
“Jesus.” Noah looked sickened. “How’s Bear?”
“We need to get him out of here,” Lunella replied, walking back into the elevator. “You move that trash out of my way first.” She indicated the dead gunman.
Noah didn’t question his cousin. Annalee had no objection to Lunella taking charge for the moment. Noah bent, took hold of the dead man’s ankles and dragged the body out of sight. She had to thrust her arm between the doors to prevent them from closing.
When Noah returned, he and Lunella managed to drag Bear’s travois out of the elevator while Annalee stood guard.
Bear was semi-conscious now, making little soprano-puppy whines. Lunella shushed him, stroking his fur. “Gonna be okay. We’re goin’ home.” She grabbed her side of the travois and nodded at Noah. “Let’s go,” she said shortly.
Annalee wanted to kiss Lunella, to comfort her, but settled for a pat on the woman’s solidly muscled shoulder that she hoped was reassuring. She walked ahead of Noah and Lunella, taking point since the adrenaline had worn off already, leaving her tired, stiff and aching. She wasn’t sure she could summon the necessary strength to haul the travois, especially now there was a second pair of hands to help.
The elevator had deposited them at the back of Cutshall’s stable. The odors of manure and hay scratched at Annalee’s throat. A single overhead light burned, a piss yellow bulb giving just enough illumination to navigate by. The stalls on either side were cast in deep shadow.
As their group proceeded, a horse let out a series of angry-sounding squeals and began kicking its stall door, an infuriated pounding soon echoed by the other horses. Even the ponies joined in, clattering their hooves and making a hellacious racket.
“What the hell is that about?” Annalee asked, raising her voice to be heard.
“It’s us,” Lunella replied, her teeth bared in what was emphatically not a grin. “Me ’n Bear ’n Noah. Horses are prey animals. They smell us and they’re afraid.”
Annalee narrowed her eyes. “You told me Noah couldn’t change.”
“Don’t matter none. He’s still got the blood.”
“He’s standing right here,” Noah said, sounding bitter.
In that instant, Annalee saw exactly how it had been for the lonesome young boy, different from everyone else, but not different enough to be embraced by his kin. He had belonged fully to neither world. Lunella and her family hadn’t treated Noah very well, but he had still come out here to help. Which reminded her…
“How the heck did you know where we were?” she asked him.
Noah shrugged and shifted his grip on the travois pole. “Uncle Ezra called me, told me what kind of crazy shit y’all were doing.” A horse poked its head over the stall door and tried to bite him. He shifted out of range. “Figured I’d better check it out.”
Lunella gave him a tiny, approving smile. “Good to see you, cuz.”
He flushed. “C’mon, or do you want the whole house to know we’re trespassing?”
By the time they exited the stable, Annalee had the beginnings of a spectacular headache. She breathed the night air, drawing it deep into her lungs. Overhead, a moon the color of buttermilk had risen above the ridgeline. “Where’re you parked?” she asked Noah.
“Hard by the old wishing well.”
Closer than her SUV, if she remembered the lay of Cutshall’s property correctly. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” she said. “Noah, take Lunella and Bear home, by which I mean the Skinner place. I’m headed to the church, where I reckon I’ll find Dempsey.”
Both Lunella and Noah began to speak, their simultaneous protests rendering their words unintelligible. Annalee held up a hand for silence. “No arguments,” she said, drawing on her authority as sheriff. “Bear needs medical attention and Dempsey needs to be stopped. We can’t do everything together. We’re going to have to split up. It makes sense.”
Lunella continued shaking her head. “I’ll go with you to the church,” she said with a mulish expression on her face.
“I don’t think so, honey. Listen, you need to go with your…your brother,” Annalee said, stumbling slightly over a sentence her brain insisted was too impossible to contemplate. “He needs you, and we sure can’t stand here jawing over it all damned night.”
As if on cue, Bear made a particularly pitiful whimper. Lunella’s head whipped around. She stared at the wolf on the travois, clearly conflicted. Finally, her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, okay, I’ll take him home. He needs Aunt Rachael.”
Noah opened his mouth but snapped it shut when Annalee anticipated him. “Lunella can’t do this alone. You go with her,” she said, batting away a mosquito whining shrilly in her ear. “I don’t care about what happened when you folks were twelve years old. Get over it. When you’re done, if you haven’t heard from me otherwise, I’ll see you at the church.”
And that was that, as far as she was concerned. Annalee lingered only long enough to see Lunella and Noah disappear into the darkness, dragging the travois between them. She wasted no time finding her Land Cruiser.
Lunella’s clothes were on the front passenger seat where she had left them. Annalee scooped up the T-shirt and pressed her nose to the fabric, which was richly impregnated with Lunella’s musky scent. She inhaled the familiar bittersweet fragrance, feeling some of the tension coiled in her belly beginning to relax. Allowing herself only a moment’s indulgence, she put the shirt aside and started the engine.
There was business to be done.
The drive to the Church of the Honey in the Rock was uneventful, giving her a welcome opportunity to compose herself. Downtown Brightbrook wasn’t that far from Cutshall’s property, about twenty minutes in normal traffic, but this late at night there was virtually no one else on the road. The real action, she knew, would be over in Lingerville at the bars and illegal cock fights, the movie theater and the lone dance club that offered two-for-one longnecks. She watched the accelerator’s needle edge over the speed limit and didn’t care. Any passing patrolman would assume she was responding to a call.
The church was located next to a family-style restaurant named Twinkle’s that served the worst country-fried steak in the county in her opinion, and their mashed potatoes were instant, another grievous sin. The building housing the church had once been a Quik-E-Print shop until the owner was arrested by her father for counterfeiting green cards and passports.
The church owned no steeple, no bell, just a squat concrete- block structure with huge, street-facing windows. The interior was shielded from casual view by thick white and blue curtains. One of the windows had discreet gold lettering painted on the wide pane—Church of the Honey in the Rock, Rev. J. Lassiter, attendance by appointment only.
Annalee parked the SUV at the curb next to a black Hummer—the vehicle seen by Noah Whitlock, she assumed—and cautiously approached the front door. She had no search warrant and therefore no official standing. She didn’t even have probable cause. Then again, she had no intention of bringing the matter to court if it could be helped.
Exactly what she was going to do to Dempsey, she had no idea. An arrest would mean putting paperwork into the system. Once that happened, nothing could stop the entire story from getting out. It would only take one curious reporter to ferret out some inconvenient facts and the werewolves of Daredevil County would be exposed to the public. She wasn’t going to let that happen, but she wasn’t going to do nothing, either.
First things first: get hold of Dempsey.
Annalee pulled out her flashlight. As she recalled from a brief stint of working for the Quik-E printer before she went to the police academy, there was a narrow alley between the church and the restaurant that led to a rear area which couldn’t be seen from the street. Behind the church was a plot of heat-withered grass backing onto a stand of hickory trees, technically part of the city’s Grover Makepeace Public Park.
Annalee progressed as silently as possible, leaving the flashlight’s beam off since she found the moonlight suff
icient for now. She passed the shattered basement door. Someone had tidied up the splinters and nailed a few boards over the hole, but something—likely Ruth Lassiter, her body and mind twisted by Dempsey’s serum—had really busted the hell out of it.
The back door with its chipped and faded paint was intact and, when Annalee tested the knob, proved to be unlocked. She opened the door and slipped inside, finding herself in a tiny kitchenette consisting of a single cabinet, a sink and a mini-refrigerator. A dim light beckoned to her from the next room, a square space with three rows of folding chairs and a carpeted dais with a carved oak pulpit. A large gilt cross hung on the wall. The air had the stale feeling she got in houses that were uninhabited or neglected.
Annalee operated on instinct, letting it guide her through an empty room adjoining the church hall and further along to a door. Pressing her ear against the panel, she detected a faint mutter of voices that seemed to come from far away, so she believed they might be in the basement. Impossible to identify how many people were involved. More than one, certainly. Dempsey and who else? Maybe the Hummer’s driver? Someone unknown?
Putting away the flashlight and drawing her weapon, Annalee paused a moment. Her heart thumped in her chest with such force that she was surprised the wild beating wasn’t audible. This was exactly the sort of situation that made a law-enforcement officer’s sphincter pucker. She didn’t dare call for back-up—what would she tell her other deputies? That a mad scientist was using werewolf DNA to turn rich folks into mutants? She’d be lucky to escape confinement to a rubber room and a strict regimen of anti-psychotics. Waiting for Noah was equally problematic. He might come in the next five minutes or the next five hours, too late to capture Dempsey if the man fled the scene. Furthermore, there was an unknown number of potential assailants in what she assumed was the basement or a sub-level of the building. She had no way of knowing if they were armed and/or prepared to resist. Dempsey had already tried to shoot Lunella, which in her mind indicated he was dangerous and desperate.
Seconds ticked past while she waited for her gut to tell her what to do.
At last, Annalee eased the door open. The voices became more audible, but she still couldn’t make out the conversation. She was able to identify Dempsey and Abner Cutshall as the main participants in what sounded like an argument. To her surprise, she also heard Deuteronomy Cutshall, the Great Man’s journalist son. Ron’s relationship with his father was shaky at best, everybody knew that. What was he doing at the church?
She quietly picked her way down the stairs, aided by the light shining at the bottom. When she was halfway, she stopped and crouched, peering under the banister at the men below, who had their backs to the staircase.
She held her .38 in front of her, the grip adhering to her sweaty palm. She licked her salty upper lip and settled in to watch and listen, ready to react when it became necessary.
“You’ve had months!” Cutshall wheezed. He paused to take a hit from the portable oxygen cylinder next to him. In the weak illumination, he appeared thin and ghostly, already a half step into the next world. “Months, Mr. Dempsey, to perfect your serum,” he continued. “My corporation has provided you with not only the necessary funds, but also the research subjects you required, and at great physical and financial risk, I might add. I’ve been very generous, doctor. It isn’t wise to disappoint me.”
“But sir, we’re just not ready.” Dempsey sounded weary. He had a thick, blood-spotted bandage tied around his leg over his jeans.
Cutshall interrupted. “You need to concentrate on perfecting your formula.”
“Without a research subject—”
Ron cut off Dempsey. “You’ll do as you’re told. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and my father’s the one footing the bills.”
“That’s my boy,” Cutshall said approvingly, taking another deep, sucking breath of oxygen. “I knew I could count on you, Deuteronomy. When push comes to shove, blood’s more important than petty disagreements.”
“Especially when this blood wants to stay in your will.” Ron curled his hand around Dempsey’s bicep, squeezing hard enough to make the doctor wince. “Do you have copies of your research notes?” he asked.
“Of course.” Dempsey dug a flash card out of his shirt pocket. “I record everything and back up my files twice daily.”
“Good. Then you’ll have no difficulty continuing your work in another laboratory.” Cutshall gestured at Ron, who went over and helped him sit down in a chair. “I don’t have much time left, Dr. Dempsey, so don’t waste any of it. I’ll order the Gunns to capture two more creatures for you after the sheriff’s out of the picture. Will that be sufficient?”
Dempsey rubbed his face. He looked frustrated and tired. “Mr. Cutshall, I’m still working on controlling the mutation. Delivering the morphogens that affect normal tissue differentials isn’t a problem, but until I’m able to…well, it’s a technical problem that will take time to solve.” He shrugged and swept a hand through the air. “Do you want to wind up like Ruth Lassiter and that lawyer friend of hers?”
“What happened?” Ron asked. “Or do I not want to know?”
Cutshall ignored him. “Why waste injections on those two?”
“Because they threatened me.” Dempsey’s expression turned petulant. “That lawyer, Mr. Thompson, he was very offensive. Very offensive, sir. I told him the serum wasn’t perfected yet, I told him he should ask Mr. Cutshall for permission, but Thompson wouldn’t listen. Mrs. Lassiter said she deserved the serum since her husband had been murdered, and she wouldn’t listen to me! I tried to warn her. I tried to warn them both.”
Ron grimaced. “So she died? Shit!”
“As I said, the mutation isn’t controllable yet. They both suffered terminal genetic alteration. Mrs. Lassiter escaped. I was able to subdue her with a tranquilizer dart, but she died. Mr. Thompson attacked me. I shot him with silver.” Dempsey’s eyes narrowed. “Unlike the creatures I’ve been studying, Mr. Thompson was not merely inconvenienced by the silver, but actually appeared to suffer an acute anaphylactic reaction that killed him.”
“For a genius scientist, you’re a damned fool incompetent,” Cutshall muttered. “Dumping those bodies by the river…you could have done a better job of concealing your mistakes. They were found by fishermen, for God’s sake! Now the sheriff’s involved.”
“Fucking hell,” Ron muttered. “A goddamned cover-up.”
Dempsey stiffened. “I planned on disposing of the remains in the river,” he said to Cutshall, “but circumstances prevented me—”
“When you were seen, you ran away like a coward and left your mess behind.” Cutshall snorted. “Next time, let the real men do the important jobs, Dr. Dempsey. You’d better stick to your lab equipment and research subjects.” He held up a trembling, liver-spotted hand. “We’ll meet Titus Gunn and his boys at their hunting shack, just as I’ve scheduled,” the old man said. “From there, we’ll head to the airport.”
“Why do we have to go out there?” Dempsey asked. “Why not straight to the airport?”
“That snake Titus only deals in cash and only deals with my father,” Ron said. “He don’t trust telephones. Now shut up and quit acting like you’ve got a say, ’cause you don’t. And neither do I, thanks to you and my father. I’m an accessory in a conspiracy now, so please, don’t tell me anything else I might have to testify about in court.”
“You’ll be fine. Ron, my boy, have you heard from Harrison?” Cutshall asked.
Ron grimaced. “When I went to pick up the doctor at the barn like you asked, he told me there was a lab animal running loose. I told Harrison to take care of it. He ought to be waiting at the house. Sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“Uh, there was a woman cop there too,” Dempsey said. He bristled when the other men stared at him incredulously. “I was bitten, remember? I’ve lost blood.”
“A woman cop?” Cutshall’s gaze cut to his son and back to Dempsey. “Who?”
“Dunno, some female in a uniform.”
“Was it the sheriff?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call the house right now and find Harrison.” Cutshall directed the sharp-voiced command to his son.
Ron pulled out a cell phone and made the call. After a few moments, he snapped the phone closed and shook his head. “The housekeeper hasn’t seen him,” he reported.
“Damn it.” Cutshall sucked oxygen before he continued. “We’ve got to hurry. If the sheriff met Harrison in the barn, I can almost guarantee she’s on her way over here. That woman is as stubborn as her father.”
Ron ran his fingers through his red hair, making it stand up in messy, improbable clumps on his head. “I don’t like this, Dad. The SUV’s out front. Let’s go.”
Annalee knew the time had come to act. She stood up, aiming her gun at Dempsey. “I’m afraid you gentlemen will be comin’ with me,” she said loudly.
Only Dempsey appeared startled. He turned, his hand flying up to cover his mouth. Abner Cutshall merely gave her a cold stare, while Ron…
Ron spun around and pulled the trigger of the gun he held—the gun she had neither seen nor anticipated.
Her hip burned. Shit, I’m hit, she thought as her blood began smoldering, a rush of heat circling her heart and pumping through her limbs. The steady beat of her pulse slowed, a deliberate banging against her eardrums. She glanced at her hip and made out the black-feathered tip of a dart sticking out of her tan uniform pants. She raised her .38, but the muzzle wavered too much for her to fire off a shot. The gun fell from her nerveless hand. Lightless black crept around the edges of her vision, turning everything fuzzy. Her knees buckled and she fell forward, thinking, This is gonna hurt like a mother-fu—
Bump-bump-bump!
The world spun over and over in snatches of images and flashes of red-tinged darkness accompanied by sickening lurches as she tumbled down the stairs. Her head, her elbow, her knee, her shoulder, her uninjured hip cracked against the treads, bright sparks of pain in the skin-tingling flush of adrenaline and endorphins. A final, bone-rattling thud and she lay sprawled face up on the floor, staring at a bare, low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling. Her chest rose and fell, but there wasn’t enough air to fill her lungs. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She fought to stay conscious.