Arnow had never seen anything like it.
In the distance, he heard a rumble that was either one of those monstrous trucks rolling along up 45 or a thunderstorm brewing up somewhere in the county. Seconds later, a second rolling boom sounded more like thunder. He heaved a short sigh of relief. The gun in his hand seemed peculiarly like overkill right then, and he started to holster it. But before he could, he heard a loud growl erupt from somewhere within the trees, a growl that sent icicles down his back. He kept the Glock up and ready, his mind going numb with terror.
The growling was closer, only feet away, but the swirling ground fog obstructed his view, and all he could do was aim the squared-off muzzle toward whatever seemed to be ready to burst through the brush any second.
Then he heard a second growl, lower pitched and farther away, and the sounds of branches and brush being crushed by something large. Heading his way.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. Arnow waved the pistol in a short arc, wondering at what point firing any of his precious rounds would be too late.
Mr. XYZ
Rubbing his hands with glee, he stepped from room to room, his excitement building.
He was talking to himself. “Ashley, my darling dear, I’m coming!”
He wasn’t yet, not really, but the leather harness he wore around and over his genitals kept him erect. The built-in cock ring helped keep him rock hard. The black studded strap that tightly ringed his testicles alternately tickled and strangled him, reducing his scrotum to a tiny, stretched ball sack. The tip of his penis glistened with his anticipation.
He’d known in his head that this was what Ashley wanted from the first moment he’d seen her, shuttling back from town to some resort rental on her Vespa scooter. She was underdressed in a tight sweatshirt and Brewers ball cap through the back of which she’d fed her honey-blond ponytail. She had a small Trig’s bag of groceries tied down behind her. Mr. XYZ might have ignored her, but she had zigged around his slow-moving SUV and grinned at him with a glance that indicated she’d noticed his good looks, appreciated them, and wanted to get to know him.
Ah yes, yes indeed! He grinned back.
They’d played tag through several stop signs. She surged around him only to lose her lead to his much larger engine, and then vice versa when her acceleration sent the tiny machine speeding past him with a bumblebee buzz that seemed to caress his brain right at the stem.
Then they were on open road, a stretch with no traffic at all.
He paced her, enjoying when she turned occasionally to glance at him with interest. Her eyes were wide and grew wider as he raced to approach her from the rear, enjoying the innocence of the game she found as exhilarating as he did.
He grinned at her, then tapped the accelerator and nudged her off the road with his bumper, knocking the Vespa into the ditch just off the shoulder and tossing the girl in one direction and the grocery bag in another. The Vespa buzzed loudly one last, long moment, then was suddenly still.
He pulled over and went through the motions of seeming concerned, a Good Samaritan helping out a poor accident victim. No one drove by, so when he reached the limp blonde girl, he deftly lifted her onto his shoulder and climbed the slight incline back to his SUV. He tossed her into the back row of seats like a sack of cornmeal, slipped a ball gag between her lips, and slid her wrists into small handcuffs already secured to the seat back.
He shoved the dented Vespa down the incline, where it sank into a stand of tall weeds growing out of a scum-covered pond barely visible from the road.
He was soon back at his secure base of operations, and in minutes he was ready to entertain his new guest.
Now he stood over her expectantly, waiting for her to awaken, his erection ready to bring her pleasure and joy.
“Ashley, my darling dear, I’m waiting for you.” He had checked her vitals and she was fine, just a little bruised and battered. He considered waking her with a nudge, but decided to wait and let nature take its course. If he called her name enough, she’d awaken eventually.
When she finally did, the duct-tape bindings and the rubber ball in her mouth kept her quiet and motionless, and Mr. XYZ flicked on the TiVo to help put her in the mood.
The girl closed her eyes when she saw him “looking” at Heather Wilson on the screen, and he slapped her to make her watch and participate. Tears and mascara dribbled over her distended cheeks.
“You’re so lucky to be here,” he whispered in her ear, sliding the straight-razor along the outer ridge of the ear an inch from his mouth. He flicked his tongue at her, touching her tingly flesh and blade both, electrifying himself all the way down to his penis. He was dripping now and he grabbed himself, wiping his sticky wetness on her glistening skin. She struggled against her bindings, but she could barely manage to shiver the red hand truck.
“Ashley, darling, I know you can’t wait,” he said, “but give me a minute.”
By the time he loosened his own bindings, she had fainted. The moment had been too much for her. He understood. He was patient. He’d wait for her.
Anyway, he had a phone call to make.
Lupo
Slinking around the oldest, widest pines, the Creature approached the other wolf, who was too busy with his own stalking to smell him. The scent of prey had clouded his judgment and he’d become careless, letting Lupo maneuver the Creature closer and closer by sticking to his blind side.
Lupo used the Creature’s eyes to examine his opponent. He was a good bit smaller than Lupo, covered in a thick black pelt like his own, but with a gray streak across his chest. Muscular but not as massive. He looked fast and savage. Blood flecked his snout and paws.
The Creature snuck up on the other wolf with the infinite cunning born of many years of practice.
But his practice had never involved another just like him.
He broke a branch under one paw and froze, standing stock-still, ready to pounce.
Incredibly, the other wolf seemed oblivious, his attention fixed on something or someone past the tree line.
Lupo forced the Creature to follow the other wolf’s line of sight, even though the Creature wanted to press his advantage and attack.
Between the pines, Lupo saw movement out on the road. Fog covered the ground, but the police car was visible with its flashers and light bar bouncing red and blue off the mist. Somewhere out there was a cop, probably Arnow, thought Lupo. The other wolf was stalking him.
No more howling, so he sensed the rest of the pack had moved on to wherever they were headed. The slim black wolf had fallen behind, entranced by the unexpected prey.
Lupo’s ears pricked up at the sound of another police car pulling up near the first.
It’s a convention. But the Creature was focused on the other wolf, invader of his territory. He dribbled a mark where he stood, making it official.
The Creature took charge. He growled a challenge and bared his fangs. The moment had arrived, whether Lupo was ready or not.
The intruder turned to him and the two black wolves stared at each other across the few yards that separated them. The intruder growled his response, and they approached each other menacingly. Now the other wolf caught his scent and acknowledged one of his kind. His jaws snapped, saliva looping out from his snout. Cold gray eyes fixed on his and flicked a warning a bare moment before he pounced.
The Creature leaped and the two wolves clashed, jaws snapping, the nearby humans temporarily forgotten.
The battle had begun.
Arnow
“Christ, what the hell is that?”
Faber had pulled up silently behind him, climbed out of his cruiser, and approached his boss.
Arnow turned, feeling a rush of gratitude to see Faber’s angular, ex-Marine profile, gun in hand. The semi-auto drooped downward, though, as if he’d forgotten about it. The deputy stared at the mess of fur and bone scattered over the asphalt. “Jesus!”
Arnow said nothing, scanning the tree line and wishing he could see into
the thicket.
“That wasn’t done by no semi,” Faber said between his teeth. “I seen plenty of those in my time.” He crouched. “Are these teeth marks?”
Arnow nodded. “Think so.”
“Shit.”
Suddenly there was a commotion of breaking branches and flattening of undergrowth just a few yards away, and both Arnow and Faber brought up their gun muzzles. Ar-now’s bladder seemed suddenly quite full, and he prayed he wouldn’t wet himself.
The two stood warily side by side, with nervous feelings and twitchy hands, facing the woods and half expecting something to come hurtling at them.
Now they heard the sound of breaking boughs from off to their left as well and something moving slowly through the woods toward the right. Growls, deep and frightening, torn from fearsome throats, raised the hair on the men’s necks.
Out of sight behind the tree line, but seemingly only yards from the road, two great hunters came at each other, growling, roaring like movie monsters.
Faber and Arnow exchanged looks, watching the woods as if the fighters might crash out at anytime and turn their attention on them.
“Christ!” Faber said as the combatants clashed, invisible, but all the more frightening because of it.
The growls and yelps moved farther away, deeper into the woods, and Arnow started to call for backup.
Faber turned his wide eyes on his boss. “What? We’re going in there? No way!”
Arnow’s feet wanted to take flight. He fought it, swallowing his own fear so his deputy wouldn’t see it.
“We’re…waiting to see who comes out.”
“Boss, they’re getting farther away. I say let ‘em. It’s nothing to do with us. It’s a forest thing.”
“It’s a forest thing that’s been killing our people,” Arnow noted.
“Not our people.”
“Shit, not you too, Jerry?”
“Well, they ain’t. They already got all the treaty rights they want.”
In the dark woods the battle still raged, but it seemed to be inching farther and farther away. Arnow wrestled with himself, his own fear, and Jerry’s lack of commitment. By the time somebody got their ass out here to back them up, the animals would be a mile into the woods. And maybe by then they’d have become food themselves.
Arnow opened his trunk and hefted out the pump shotgun cradled in the rack. But by now he knew it was just for show, to not let Faber off the hook so easily. He couldn’t admit it, but his knees were still jelly at the sounds of the fight. Even far enough away to be muffled by the thick woods, it still sounded ferocious and painful. The sound was further muffl ed by the ground mist, which acted like a reflector and confused directions.
He pumped a round into the chamber and hoped they didn’t become dessert for whatever lurked out there.
In the distance, thunder rumbled and lightning strobed over the forest. The sounds of the fight were fading fast now. Had it really been so fierce?
“Fuck it,” Arnow growled. “We’re too late. Let’s go in.”
He was pissed at the racist asshole at his side, pissed because he’d thought Faber was one of the good ones.
Let his true colors show. They all do, eventually.
Faber looked at him funny and turned away without a word. Arnow figured he looked like he wanted to use the shotgun on anyone too close.
When he was alone in his cruiser, he felt a telltale warm-cold wetness along the inside of one pant leg.
Sonofabitch.
He smacked the steering wheel hard.
Jessie
She awoke with a start, her eyes suddenly as wide open as if they’d been pried with a crowbar.
The echo of something loud faded quickly.
Thunder?
Lightning flared over the treetops.
It was thunder.
But for a second, she couldn’t help thinking she’d heard a scream, or continuous screaming, and maybe growls and howling.
And what she thought was thunder at first could have been a gunshot.
She shook her head. Nightmare.
Thunder rolled and boomed, coming closer.
No, it was a gunshot.
And another.
Lupo
Lupo steered the Creature away from the road, away from the cop. His jaws snapping, he dragged the black-and-gray wolf with him, disorienting his opponent and giving him nothing else on which to focus, only himself.
And survival.
Lupo knew this Other was a sworn enemy, whether in human or wolf form. There would be no quarter, no respite. There could only be a victor, and Lupo’s faith in the Creature and his strength had increased a hundredfold in the last couple of years, but there had been no opponents like this one.
And he is only one of a pack, Lupo thought as he fought for his life.
The advantage of his surprise attack was fading fast, and the balance now swung toward the other wolf. Its supernatural origins made a difference, canceling Lupo’s inherent advantage over his usual pray.
The black-and-gray wolf was cunning, fearless, and ruthless.
He came in, jaws snapping, taking every opportunity to draw blood and tear flesh from Lupo’s larger body.
But Lupo worried his enemy with the same tactics, knowing that the blinding pain of each wound would be only temporary. He surmised that the Other was no different, but that meant they were on equal footing.
They traded bites and clawings one for one, bleeding from each gash and tear, rolling through the mist from tree to tree and taking a bloody bruising from the sharply angled branches that protruded from the mature pines.
And then suddenly Lupo felt his back shoved up against a giant pine trunk. He was shackled to the unyielding wood, his movements limited.
Now fear tinged the edges of the Creature’s brain.
The Creature half howled, half growled its fear and tried a counterattack with tooth and claw.
Seizing its advantage, the other wolf fended off the worst of Lupo’s attack with its own muscular body, taking most of the wounds in less vital areas. But it still managed to sharpen its fearful combinations of deadly snaps, its snout a snarling blur of raging fangs.
Lupo felt the Creature tiring, felt himself slowing in response, felt the pain of each sharp bite or claw hurt more, bleed more, and sap his energy more.
Now the Creature’s body bled from too many painful wounds. His life seeped into the ground below them, disappearing into the mantle of mist hugging the forest floor.
The black-and-gray wolf paused to let out a single loud howl, the howl of a victor.
And that was when a shotgun blast took him square in the side and flung him like a rag doll away from Lupo’s struggling. He yelped and whimpered like a car-hit dog in intense pain.
A second shotgun blast took one eye and most of an ear and flayed the skin and pelt as if with a rusty razor.
The wolf shuddered, shook itself back to its unsteady feet, and turned to locate its attacker. Blood glistened in the black hole where the left eye had been. The wolf shook itself again, splattering the pine trunks and forest floor. But there was something wrong.
Lupo watched as the wolf listed sideways like a ship about to slip under the waves, unsure what he was seeing. Smoke curled from some of the Other’s wounds, the mon-ster’s remaining eye turning glassy and rolling as if he were about to lose consciousness.
Sam Waters stood to the side of the tiny clearing, calmly breaking open his old double-barreled shotgun and ejecting the spent shells. Two new shells appeared in his hand and slid into the chambers.
But before he could complete his reloading, the black-and-gray wolf snarled, its lone eye blazing at both enemies. It lunged into the underbrush, crashing through and finding its legs, making its escape with a crooked lope into the woods.
Sam Waters
“Dammit!” Sam cried, bringing the gun up to his shoulder and firing again, his shot shredding the brush where the wolf had just been.
He turned
to where Lupo’s Creature had been a moment before, but now it was Lupo. His hairy pelt disappeared rapidly as if it had never been, and suddenly it was just a naked human lying against the huge pine that had almost been its undoing. He screamed as Sam approached, putting his hands up to cover his face.
“Oh, sorry, Nick,” Sam said, lowering the shotgun. “Silver buckshot.”
“Sam,” Lupo croaked, “I can’t stand it, it’s too much in one place.”
“I’ll stay back. Can’t take the chance he’ll come back and attack us when we let our guard down.”
“He’s done, believe me,” whispered Lupo. “Those two shots would have finished me. I can’t believe he survived them.”
“I didn’t have time to aim, dammit. I should have hit his head.”
“Oh, you did,” Lupo grinned past the pain. “You sure as hell did.”
Sam grimaced. “You’re a mess.”
“Tell me about it.”
He set the shotgun against a tree far enough away, then helped Lupo unsteadily to his feet.
“How did you happen to be wandering around in here? This is miles from your place.”
“Call it destiny maybe,” Sam said. “I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I might as well make myself useful. Went huntin’. Figured one of these monsters might show up where I happened to be.”
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky because I think I had three of them on my tail all night.”
“Three?” He blinked. “Jesus. So it’s true—there are more of you out there?”
“Yeah, it’s true, dammit. And we better move—the other two might show up anytime.”
Sam stepped back and grabbed up the shotgun, keeping it away from Lupo but at the ready.
“Your old shaman friend wasn’t the only one to mess with the unknown. Or maybe these guys are a result of his experiments too. Where did you get that silver buckshot?”
“You didn’t think I would have some silver shells left?”
“You didn’t trust me, did you?”
“Let’s just say I was playing it safe. Looks like I was right, thinking that way. Now let’s get you home to the good doctor.”
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