by Butcher, Jim
I watched the killing, and I hid, and I prayed that there would be an opportunity to flee toward the open doors of the garage before Denton or Parker noticed me. It went on forever. Oh, I knew, in some rational part of my brain, that only seconds were going by, but it felt like days. I was terrified, and my head and my body hurt, and I couldn’t use magic to protect myself.
There was a sound near my ankle, and my heart leapt up out of my throat. I flinched violently away from it. The sound repeated itself in a continuous scrabble of noise. The floor, I noticed, was rough dirt and broken concrete in this corner, where the foundation platform was flawed. The scrabbling noise came from the very base of the wall, where the dirt was stirring and moving.
Something was trying to dig its way beneath the wall and into the garage, practically right underneath my butt. I felt a chill of fear, followed swiftly by anger at the thing that had added to an already overabundant flow of adrenaline. I clutched my make-shift weapon in hand and moved to crouch over the source of the disturbance, lifting it in preparation to strike at whatever came through.
I saw it in the dimness, and there was no mistaking the shape. A paw, a huge canine paw, scrabbled at the earth, digging out a shallow hole beneath the wall, frustrated by bits of concrete that got in the way. Between shots, I could hear animal sounds outside, panting whimpers of eagerness, it seemed. Whatever was out there wanted to dig its way inside, and wanted it bad.
“Dig this,” I muttered, and swung the wrench down on the paw, hard.
There was an instant yelp of pain, and the paw jerked its way back out from beneath the corrugated-metal wall. It was followed by a snarl, and the paw appeared again, whereupon I slammed the wrench down on it once more, with similar results. I heard a furious snarling sound from the other side, and I released a small surge of vindictive satisfaction by leaning down close enough to the hole to say, “Hah. Bring another one in here and I’ll give you the same.”
I heard sounds outside for a moment, then a crunch of gravel, and Tera West’s smooth, unmistakable voice. “Wizard,” she hissed. “Stop that.”
I blinked, startled, and leaned down close to the hole. “Tera? Is that you? How did you know it was me?”
“You are the only man I ever met,” Tera growled, “who would smash the paws that are trying to free you from certain death.” I flinched at another burst of gunfire from the far side of the garage. “I am going to tell them to dig again. Do not strike at their paws.”
“Them?” I demanded. “Them who?”
But she didn’t answer me. Instead, the scrabbling sounds began again. I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the room. I saw Streetwolves moving swiftly out through the door and the gaping hole Marcone had left in the garage door when he escaped. In a flash of automatic muzzle-flare, I saw Denton standing over the form of a lanky woman and firing down into it, apparently making absolutely certain that she would never rise again. I had enough time to recognize Lana’s face, now screwed up with pain rather than bloodlust. Her body jerked and twitched as Denton emptied the remainder of the clip into her. And then everything went dark again.
By my feet, the scrabbling sounds continued—and then broke off in a yelp. I heard a series of vicious snarls and yelps from the half-dug hole beneath the wall, and I cursed.
“Tera,” I whispered, as loudly as I dared. “What’s going on?”
There was only more growling for answer, and a sharp yelp that carried to the far side of the garage.
I threw myself flat behind the toolbox and a pile of junk, just before a flashlight beam swept over the corner where I had been hiding. “It’s that bitch,” Denton snarled. “Roger’s got her outside.”
There was a whispering sound, and a tingling feeling along my spine. Then a throaty, sensual female voice purred, “Parker’s still in here. So is that wizard. I can smell them.”
“Dammit,” Denton growled. “The wizard knows too much. Wilson, go help Roger.”
“What about me, lover?” the female voice said, a husky laugh added to the end. Agent Benn sounded like she’d just had too much sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and was hungry for more.
“You and I stay in here. I’ll cover the doors. Flush them toward me.”
There was a mewling sound of pleasure from the woman. “Come with me,” she urged. “Change. You know you love it so much. You know how good it feels.”
I could visualize Denton’s veins throbbing. “Smarter for one of us to cover the door with a gun.” But there was a sort of heavy reluctance to his tone.
“Fuck smart,” Benn purred. “Come with me. Change.”
“It’s not why we did this. Not why we made the bargain.” Benn made another sound, utterly sexual in nature. “It doesn’t matter now. Taste it,” she urged him. “Taste the blood.” The light wavered and dropped from the corner where I hid.
I chanced a look up. Agent Benn, spattered in gore, stood before Denton in the wash of his flashlight from the floor. She had three of her fingers pressed together, and was sliding them between his lips. Denton was shaking, and his eyes were squeezed tightly closed. He suckled at her fingers, something frighteningly erotic in the motion. One of the huge, gaunt beasts from earlier, Wilson I supposed, stood nearby, watching the pair of them with gleaming eyes.
Denton made a growling sound and grasped Benn by her mane of greying hair, jerking her chin up so that he could nuzzle and lick at the blood smeared over her throat. She laughed and arched into him, her hips undulating against him in urgent motions. “Change,” she moaned. “Change. Do it.”
There was a howl of rage, and flash of motion, and Parker staggered from the darkness, one arm dangling uselessly, a heavy knife in his other hand, and defiance and insane anger in his glazed eyes. Denton and Benn looked up, and then they reached to their waists, flickered, and changed into a pair of the nightmare-sized wolves, their eyes glowing in the ambient light, jaws dropping open to reveal lolling tongues and vicious fangs. Parker lurched forward, greasy hair flying, and the three wolves leapt on him.
I stared in a sort of sickened fascination. The wolves buried him under a mound of fangs and fur and blood and absolute fury. He screamed, the knife flailing, and then it was cast aside, out of his hands, to land spinning on the floor not far from me. Parker tried to fight, tried to struggle up and kick, but it was hopeless. There were flashes of blood, and he screamed again and went still.
And then the wolves started to eat him. They bit off chunks of muscle and gulped them down, ripping aside clothing to get to more meat. They snarled and snapped at one another, and one of the males mounted the female, even as she continued to tear at the body, burrowing her muzzle down through the layers of stomach muscle to get at the vitals. My gorge rose, and if I’d had anything in my stomach, I would have emptied it onto the concrete floor.
Instead, I turned back to the half-finished hole in the floor and started digging at it with my wrench, frantic. I didn’t want to be the next thing on the menu.
There were more yelps from outside, more growls, and I opened the hole up enough that I thought I might be able to get out. I flattened myself down and wormed my way into the dirt, the corrugated metal scraping at my back, my wounded shoulder paining me again.
I jerked my way out into the open air, to find myself in an alley behind the garage, dimly lit by a distant streetlight.
There were wolves everywhere.
Three wolves, smaller than the ones I had seen before, were spread in a loose ring about a great russet-furred beast with bat-like ears. The great wolf’s coat was spattered with blood, and two of the smaller wolves lay nearby, yelping in pain, stirring weakly, blood matting their coats. Tera was a part of the ring around the great beast as well, naked and lean, a length of pipe held in either hand. When the great wolf turned toward one of the others, the rest would begin to close in around him, and he would spin, jaws flashing, trying to pin down one of those who encircled him.
“You took your time, wizard,” Tera snarled, withou
t looking back at me.
I got to my feet, wrench in hand, and shook my head to clear it of cold sweat. “Tera,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Denton and the others will be coming.”
“Go,” she responded. “Help MacFinn. We will hold them.” The great russet wolf lunged at her, and she skittered back, cooly staying a hair’s breadth from his fangs. She fetched him a sharp blow across the nose with more speed than I could have believed and a contemptuous snort. The three smaller wolves rushed the great beast, and he spun to drive them back and away from him, drawing a yelp from one that wasn’t swift enough to entirely evade his jaws.
“You can’t stop them all,” I said. “There’s three more like this one.”
“There are pack on the ground,” she snarled, and jerked her head toward the wounded wolves. “We do not abandon our own.”
I let out an acid curse. I needed Tera. She could confirm everything, help me sort out all my facts, make sure that I understood what was going on. She was offering to give her life for me, to stay and occupy Denton and the others for as long as she and her compatriots could, but I had seen enough people dying already tonight. I wasn’t going to accept another loss on my behalf.
And I was abruptly more furious than afraid. I’d been run around and treated like a piece of baggage or a choice item on the menu for long enough. I’d flailed around in the dark and been helpless and ineffective for way too long. Too many people had been hurt, too much suffering caused by creatures of magic and the night, things that I should have been handling. It didn’t matter to me, at that moment, that I couldn’t work any of my spells against them. I might not have any magic available to me, but that didn’t make me any less of a wizard, one of the magi, the wise. That’s the true power of a wizard.
I know things.
Knowledge is power.
With power comes responsibility.
That made the entire thing pretty simple. I clutched the wrench in my hand, took a deep breath, and threw myself forward, at the great wolf’s back. The huge wolf sensed me coming, spun with abrupt speed, and met me in the air. It slammed me down to the concrete and bent its jaws toward my throat. I heard Tera cry out, and she and the other wolves moved forward—but they would never have been able to get to the thing before it killed me. That wasn’t the point.
I jammed the wrench into the wolf’s jaws, feeling some teeth tear at one of my fingers as I did. The wolf snarled and jerked the wrench out of my hands. It spun end over end away from me, and the great beast turned back toward me, its eyes glowing.
I had time to watch it all in great detail. The wolf’s power, its speed, simply shocked me. It was huge, quick, and I didn’t have a prayer against it. The distant streetlight gleamed off of its reddened fangs as its muzzle sped toward my throat.
Chapter Twenty-five
The wolf’s fur was speckled with drops of blood that had beaded on it like rain. The gravel in the alley shone in the half-light from the distant street lamps. The wolf’s muzzle, a little shorter and broader than I had seen on Wild Kingdom, was drawn back, black lips from fangs striped white and red like peppermints. Its eyes were blue, rather than any proper lupine shade, and gleamed with a sort of demented awareness.
I had time to see all those details because I didn’t need my eyes for what I wanted to do. I thrust my hands into the beast’s pelt as he went for my throat, and wormed my way down between his forelegs with my buttocks, fingers digging, until I felt what I was looking for—the sharp metal edges of a belt buckle, down against the skin, almost flush to the surface. As the wolf’s jaws came toward my throat, I furiously worked the buckle, feeling skin rip and tear from the wolf’s hide as I jerked it open, and then threw my arm to one side, clutching hard at the trailing strap.
And abruptly, a wolf-pelt belt was sliding out from beneath the grey suit jacket of Roger Harris, the forensic specialist for the local FBI office, the kid with the red hair and the big ears. He crouched over me for a second, blinking in stunned amazement at me, blood on his mouth and lips.
“Hexenwulf jerk-off,” I snarled and slammed my knee up into his groin. It hit home hard.
Harris gasped and rolled off me, reaching into his jacket, but I didn’t let him get his gun. I stayed with him, keeping too close to him to let him move his arms freely, grabbed him by those big ears, and started slamming his head repeatedly against the gravel. He struggled against me for a few seconds, but I’d taken him by surprise. His skull banged against the rocks over and over, and after a half-dozen solid blows, he stopped struggling.
I released his ears with a little jerk and looked up at Tera and the wolves. They were closing in around him like a pack of sharks around a wounded dolphin, and I could read the blood in their eyes, in the bared fangs, and in the white-knuckled grip of Tera’s hands on her lead pipes. I felt a sudden surge of frustration. Bad enough to have bloodthirsty animals roaming all over the city—I didn’t need more of them on my team.
“Everyone back off,” I snarled.
“He’s ours,” Tera answered me in kind. “He hurt those of the pack.”
“Then why don’t you get them some help instead of wasting your time on this guy?” I said.
“His blood is ours,” Tera said, and the wolves confirmed this with a chorus of angry growls.
“He can’t hurt you now. Killing him won’t make your friends any better. And the lost time might finish them.”
“You do not understand, wizard,” Tera snarled, and the wolves echoed her in a chorus, white fangs showing. “It is our way.”
I stood up slowly, to my full height. “I understand,” I said in a very low and even voice, “that you do not want to make me any more angry than I already am.” I met Tera’s eyes and stared, hard. My jaws ached from clenching. “There’s been enough killing. Take him out now, and you’re no different than he is.”
“Wrong,” Tera said. “I would be alive, and he dead.”
“Not if you cross me, you won’t be.”
We held the tension for a moment, glaring at one another.
I saw uncertainty waver across her face. She didn’t know that I was out of gas, magically speaking, and she had seen me do too many impressive things with my powers to want to defy me lightly. She blinked first and looked away from me with a sullen sound in the back of her throat. “As you wish, wizard,” she said. “We don’t have the time to waste fighting one another. The rest of his pack is coming. And we have wounded to tend to.”
I nodded and swept my gaze around at the three wolves around me. “Anybody else?” I challenged. They all backed away from me, and didn’t meet my eyes. “All right, then,” I said, and stooped to recover Harris’s gun and the wolf-pelt belt. “Do you have transportation out of here?”
“Yes,” Tera said. “Georgia.”
One of the wolves, a leggy, lanky, pale-brown beast shuddered and paced in a circle, making small, whimpering sounds. A moment later, there was a whisper of power. The she-wolf shivered, and went still, her head bowed. And then she shook herself, and all that pale-brown hair faded from paler skin, leaving me staring at the lanky, dark-blond girl I had seen in the department store a few days ago, sans all the black leather. Georgia rose to her feet and said, “I’ll have her bring the van around on the next street. Can you get them to it?” Her expression was tense, her eyes a little wide.
“Yes,” Tera said. “Everyone, come back to yourselves.” The other two ambulant wolves began to pace in a slow circle, gathered their own power, and their own transformations commenced, until they stood before me as a pair of naked young men—one of them the short, stout boy who had been arguing against Georgia—Billy—and the other a face I recognized but couldn’t name.
Tera took charge of the situation while I held Harris’s gun and kept watch down the alley. She and the two young men made a litter for one of the wolves out of Harris’s jacket, and the other Tera simply picked up with a flexion of wire-tight muscle and carried, though it must have weighed a hundred a
nd fifty pounds. The wounded wolves yelped piteously, and Tera and the two young men cast dark glances at the downed Harris while they headed down the alley, and over toward the beach, leaving me alone with the kid.
I hunkered down beside him and slapped his face until his eyes rolled open. He blinked once and then jerked, as though he was about to sit up. I stuck the barrel of the semiautomatic in the hollow of his throat and said, in a calm voice, “Hold still.”
He froze, staring up at me with wide eyes.
“I’m going to ask some questions, kid. I think I’ve got the answers already, but you’re going to talk to me, quietly and honestly. Or I demonstrate point-blank bullet impact for you right here and now. Got it?”
Harris’s mouth twitched a few times before he managed to speak. “If you kill me,” he said, “Denton won’t stop until you’re dead.”
“Give me a break, Roger,” I said back in a reasonable tone. “Denton wants me dead anyway. I could kill you now and it wouldn’t make any difference in what he has to do.”
Roger licked his lips and rolled his eyes about without moving his head, as though hoping for rescue. “How did you know? About the belt.”
“I saw Denton’s inside. And I saw that before you all changed, you had to reach inside your jackets for something. I figure that first night, Agent Benn was reaching into her jacket to touch the belt and tear Murphy’s head off, when she got mad. But she managed to remember not to do it in time and drew her gun instead. Right?”
Harris’s head twitched in a slight nod.
“The bargain,” I said. “You’re Hexenwulfen, so you’ve made a bargain with someone to get the power to change, to get the belts. Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” Harris said, and his eyes widened. “God, I don’t know. Denton handled all of it.”