The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy

by Richard Parry

  “I—”

  “The way I see it,” said Val, “is that you can pick up your wounded pride and get out of here, leaving this poor guy—“ and here, he jerked a thumb in Phillip’s direction “— alone.”

  “Or?” Percy was shifting from foot to foot, the men behind him standing still as stones.

  “We’ll need to get creative,” said Val.

  “Creative,” said Percy. “I like creative.” He looked at his gun, then—

  Heartbeat.

  Val was already moving, running towards Phillip. Phillip could see it before it—

  Heartbeat.

  —happened, how the gun would come down towards his head, how the last—

  Heartbeat.

  —thing he saw would be the bright flash of eternity from the barrel of a Western gun. He just wanted to—

  Heartbeat.

  —tell his family that it was over now, and he closed his eyes. For him he would be free of this tired kingdom of liars and cheats—

  The shot rang out, but the tired kingdom rolled on. Phillip felt a splash of wet, opened his eyes to the back of the man Val standing above him, standing between him and Percy. Phillip could see red was blooming on the back of Val’s burned and tattered shirt.

  This man took a bullet for me. He is going to die for a stranger. Phillip wanted to get up then, to rise and help this man. He started to push himself off the cold ground, Western words trying to form on his lips, and then—

  Val turned to him, his eyes a yellow hue. There was something wrong with his face, his teeth, and the words he spoke sounded like they were spat out, their taste and shape unfamiliar. “Get. Away.”

  “I—” Phillip reached a tentative hand out. “You’re hurt.”

  “Can’t,” said Val, something animal, something awful, in his voice. “Stop.” Then he lifted Percy off his feet, tossing the man into the side of the dumpster.

  Phillip scrambled to his feet and ran.

  • • •

  The unfamiliar limbs felt weak and slow. There were no claws at the ends of his hand, nothing to rend with, and the teeth in his head felt blunt and small. He was tied to this tiny body and its weak and frail ways. He looked out at the men around him, their puny weapons held high. He heard the stuttering, frantic beat of their hearts, and caught—

  We don’t have to kill them.

  —the smells of an unfamiliar place around him. This wasn’t a forest, a place to run free, and he felt the low, roiling burn of anger. Anger at being caged here. He longed to take those loping, easy strides under a night sky free from these tall structures of stone and iron that rose up all around. A small pain nudged at his stomach where the insect had done something to him with a weapon that spat fire. It was nothing, and the insect—

  There’s another way. Please listen.

  —would die. They all stood before him, ready to toss their lives into the ever black of nothing, and for what? He caught the glint of metal, a rectangle made by weak and simple creatures. And yet … and yet, there was this—

  The other man got away. We did what we said we would do. We saved him. We don’t have to kill anyone. Please.

  —other voice inside him that nagged and snipped and bit at his heels like a pestering pup. He couldn’t make the voice stop, but it made him question things. Where he was going. Why he was going there. It made him question his purpose.

  He stepped among the four remaining creatures, grabbing at one. There were bright flashes, pain blooming in his chest, but it was small pain, insignificant, unlike the terrible burning of—

  Silver. It’s called silver.

  —the metal the ancient enemy had cursed him with. He tossed the creature he held aside, then paused. The three left were standing around him, fear writ large on their faces, eyes wide, the beat of their hearts faster than a hunted deer. He looked closer at the one on his left, and it dropped its weapon, a tiny sliver of metal clattering to the ground.

  See? They’re stopping. They’ll run away. We don’t have to kill them. We don’t have to—

  That was when the one to his right stepped in, a long piece of wood in his hands. The creature smashed it against his head, the other voice falling to silence in a shattering of splintered timber.

  It set him free.

  • • •

  Phillip crept back to the mouth of the alley, one tentative foot in front of the other. His hands touched the edges of old brick as he peered around the corner and into the dark. Lights were out, nothing but the night sky with its fat moon reaching silver legs down to walk faint light on ground. His eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom, the blaze of street lighting at his back doing nothing to illuminate the dark unknown. Swallowing, Phillip walked into the alley. “Hello?” His voice was barely a squeak, and cleared his throat. “Is anyone there?” He let his feet take him forward.

  He wanted to help the man named Val. He wanted to make sure he was okay, because one man against five was crazy, it was suicide—

  Phillip slipped, stumbling forward and landing hard on his hands. He looked behind him at what he’d stepped on. His eyes started to pick out the details in the half light, small sticks connected to a thicker branch. It made no sense until he realized that he could see a leather strap, a watch band, encircling a wrist.

  A severed hand.

  The stump was ragged, torn. Phillip scrambled backwards like a crab trying to get away from it, but his hand connected with something warm and wet, sliding out from underneath him. He landed against a man’s chest, but there was something wrong, it was—

  Just a chest.

  The head, arms, legs were all gone, blood gone black in the half-light. Phillip looked around, taking in the details of the alley as his eyes adjusted, the bits and pieces of what used to be men scattered around him. There, legs in the over-full dumpster. There, a head on the ground. There, another severed arm, fingers holding a gun. And there—

  Something huge and full of darkness turned to look at him. Phillip couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at until he caught angry, yellow eyes. That’s when he was able to work out there was a mouth full of teeth, and that was a massive arm ended in claws, drenched wet and glistening in the black in the alley. Phillip saw the eyes blink at him, the yellow vanishing for — Oh God it’s seen me oh God — a second before a growl broke the night air. The sound cut through the noise of traffic seeping in from the mouth of the alley. The noise turned his bowels to water. He took a step backward, his foot slipping on something soft. Phillip looked below him, each individual item in the pile of red wet at his feet unidentifiable. He turned and ran.

  He wasn’t fast enough.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  She hugged her arms to her sides, shivering. She’d been outside the cabin for a long time.

  “Don’t you think you should just call him?” Carlisle stood off to her left, coat wrapped around her like a shroud. “Jesus, Danny. It’s freezing out here. Isn’t the point to make him suffer?”

  He suffers.

  Danny stood straighter. “No.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  Carlisle nodded, like she was agreeing, then she turned to face Danny. “Fill me in. What’s the point?”

  “I just…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think this is the life for your kid?”

  “Adalia?

  “You got another kid?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean … no, I don’t have another kid. Yes, the life is fine.”

  “It’s fine?”

  Danny shrugged. “You know it isn’t.”

  Carlisle nodded again. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “You didn’t have to come with me.” Danny began to pick at the wall behind her, the thatch snagging against her fingertips. It was old, brittle with the cold that wrapped around her. Snow stretched out in front of the porch, painting the bare trees white. Their cottage was small, she’d grabbed it for just a few dollars
online. If she thought about it, could almost feel the heat of the fire inside. Almost. “You really didn’t.”

  “I really did.” Carlisle sneezed. “You could have the decency to show you’re cold. Just a little.”

  “I am cold. It’s fucking freezing out here.” Danny gave her head a shake, catching a flash of curls out of the corner of her eyes. She reached up, ran a hand through her hair. “God damn. I need a hair cut.”

  “You need to call Everard.”

  “I need a haircut more than that.”

  “You really don’t,” said Carlisle. “You need to get your ass back to the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Couple of reasons I can think of,” said Carlisle. “The first being that you can’t be homeschooling your kid forever—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she needs to get out there. In the middle of it. Meet friends.”

  “Meet people who want to kill her.”

  “Come on,” said Carlisle. “Be reasonable. They don’t want to kill her. Mostly, they want to kill Everard.”

  My Valentine. Danny felt her lips twinge upward in a smile. “You got a second reason?”

  “My medical’s lapsed,” said Carlisle. “This weather’s going to kill me.”

  Danny felt the smile fall away from her face. “I miss him.”

  “I know.”

  “I miss him like the desert misses the rain,” she said. “But…”

  Carlisle waited her out, just turning back to look into the woods, saying nothing.

  “Okay,” said Danny, “it’s like this. I miss him, but I don’t know if it’s me that misses him.”

  We are the same.

  Carlisle shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Danny frowned. “I—”

  “I’ll let you think it over,” said Carlisle. “I used to get paid to catch bad people, like Batman, okay? This isn’t really in my wheelhouse. I’m going back inside to watch bad TV.”

  “There’s no TV reception out here.”

  “That’s why it’s bad,” said Carlisle. “Also, they’ve found us.”

  Danny felt her breath catch. “Biomne?”

  “Not unless they’ve opened up a resort in the Caribbean.” Danny heard something wistful in her tone, but when Carlisle spoke again her voice had gone hard. “Different ‘they.’ Still assholes though, whoever they are.”

  “When?”

  “Last night,” said Carlisle. “They didn’t follow me back here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No.” Danny felt Carlisle shrug in the darkness. “Not really sure about much at the moment. I’m not sure if we should stay, or go. I’m not sure if I should roll into town, maybe get in a fight. I don’t know if I should get drunk. I don’t know about raising teenage girls—”

  “You don’t need to—”

  “—or how to keep it all together in my head. You remember Elliot?” Carlisle’s voice had gone soft in the cold.

  “We never met,” said Danny. She was caught off guard for a moment, felt that Carlisle was wanting something from her. “We never … that was before all this.”

  “Sorta,” said Carlisle. “Kinda not as well. He went missing in the middle. I saw him again last night.”

  “He’s alive?” Danny turned to look at Carlisle. “He’s okay?”

  “Not really,” said Carlisle. “I don’t think so.”

  Danny felt Carlisle move, then the thud of the door as it closed behind her friend. She breathed, watching her breath misting in front of her.

  The desert misses the rain. The night misses the moon. Pack mate.

  “I know,” she said to the empty air. “I know.”

  • • •

  When she checked her phone, there weren’t any messages. Just a missed call from a number she knew by heart.

  “Your phone rang again,” said Adalia. Her tone was accusing.

  “I know, honey,” said Danny. She stamped her feet to get the blood moving. Force of habit. Not like she needed to. Not anymore — the blood always moved just fine. She caught a glimpse of herself in the old mirror hung over the fireplace. It was spotted with age, easy to look at. It hid so many sins she knew must be written on her face. She looked away, not wanting to meet her own eyes.

  “It rang yesterday too,” said Adalia.

  “I know,” said Danny. “I know.”

  “And —”

  “I know!” Danny tossed the phone aside.

  Adalia hunkered into the couch she was sitting on, the back of it cutting her off from Danny’s view. Danny could see the tips of flames licking up into the chimney from where she stood, the couch not quite blocking her view. Adalia said something, almost too low to hear, but it’d been a long time since Danny had been able to pretend she hadn’t heard something.

  Still. You needed to pretend, sometimes. You needed to be a mother, sometimes. Or all the time. Even when you wanted to run, or hunt, or cry. “What was that?”

  “He always calls,” her daughter said again. “And you never answer.”

  Danny looked down at her hands, then at the back of the couch. Adalia hadn’t surfaced again — her eyes probably on the fire. “It’s complicated.”

  “Mom? If I had a boyfriend—”

  “If?”

  “If I had a boyfriend, and he called me and I didn’t pick up for a week — or a month, or a year — do you know what would happen?”

  Danny shrugged, even though she knew Adalia couldn’t see her. “I’m a bit out of touch with the kids of today.”

  “I’d be so dumped,” said Adalia. “Dumped. Like, he would stop calling.”

  The night misses the moon.

  “Maybe…” Danny felt her voice catch. “Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “What if,” said Adalia, “tomorrow is the day he stops wanting to talk?”

  Danny’s reply was cut off by Carlisle stamping in from the hallway. She was decked out in loose-fitting faded jeans and an old bomber jacket. “I’m out.”

  “You’re what?” Danny blinked at her.

  “Going out. Before we spend so much time together we start synchronizing periods. Shark week three at a time is hell. Just the thought of two at a time was why I’d never be a lesbian.”

  “I thought,” said Adalia’s voice from behind the couch, “you weren’t lesbian because you—”

  “And that’s my cue,” said Carlisle. “Kid? Stuff we talk about when your Mom’s not here is like stuff that goes on in Vegas.”

  “I’ve never been to Vegas.”

  “Good,” said Carlisle, as the door rattled closed behind her. The sound of their big truck starting up pattered against the outside of the cabin, fading as the distance ate the sound.

  Danny looked at the door, the night falling outside. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. She took a half step towards the couch where Adalia sat, then stopped, looking at her phone again.

  Tomorrow. She’d call tomorrow. Because…

  Because she just wasn’t ready yet.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Carlisle looked at the door to the bar, the snow falling around her. Her bomber jacket wasn’t warm enough for this, not by a long shot, but she’d get warm inside soon enough, and she wanted to be free to move. She reached behind her to the sidearm she had tucked into the waist of her jeans, then pulled her jacket down over the top. The Eagle was big but felt comfortable against her back — an old friend, one she’d felt she’d needed since … well, since she’d started hunting bigger game.

  Your problem, she said to herself as she walked towards the entrance to the bar, is that you can’t leave shit alone. You should get Danny and her kid, get them in the truck, and drive, just fucking drive until there’s no more people anywhere around you.

  Except, that’s what they’d tried to do when they found this place. Drove to a point where there wasn’t supposed to be a town on a map, and they’d still found her. Carlisle felt the weight of it on her shou
lders. They hadn’t tracked Danny, or even the kid. Detective Carlisle, the Caribbean man had said. He’d known who she was, what she was from before.

  There were trucks parked out front tonight, five of them, one of them big and black. Snow was gathering against them, softening the edges of their shapes in the dark. The black truck had tinted windows that were out of place in a town where the night lasted far too long. As she got near it, she kneeled down in the snow, fishing the tracker — a small box, easy to miss unless you were looking for it — out of a pocket. Carlisle flicked a switch on the box, then stuck it up under the wheel arch. She brushed snow from her knees, then breathed the night air, the dry cold of it sharp in her nose. She didn’t have Danny’s gifts, but she could catch the scent of bad liquor and cheap men on the air as well as the next girl.

  She looked around one more time. Last chance. Just walk the fuck away. She ran a hand through her hair, then walked to the door of the bar — wrong way, wrong damn way Carlisle — pushing it open in a smooth motion. Warmth and light and the smell of fried food hit her all at the same time, and she stood still for a moment, door open behind her, snow falling and tumbling in around her feet.

  Carlisle saw them in the bar — Caribbean, perfect teeth showing as his lips started to pull up in a smile of recognition. She felt an unexpected, almost foreign twinge in her gut — you hardly know the man, get over it Carlisle — and pushed it aside. She looked at the two other men that stood next to him, their heads turning to look at her. She let the door close behind her as she took in the other men in the bar, all cut of the same cloth — heavy set, too much fat over muscle made strong by working outside in the cold.

  “Detective Carlisle,” said Caribbean. He looked genuinely pleased to see her, his eyes flicking down and back up as he—

  Don’t kid yourself, Carlisle. He’s ten years younger than you, and was probably banging cheerleaders in college. You hate cheerleaders.

  —stood up, arms wide and welcoming. “It looks like we won’t need a search after all.”

  “I’ll get to you in a second,” she said, then turned to the men Caribbean and his team were talking to. “All you guys? Get out.”