“Send her across to me,” he barked.
Heather Wilson
She stepped across the wide pier, aiming right for the doctor. Her gaze grabbed Jessie’s tear-bloated eyes and blinked, blinked, then signaled left.
She should have been freezing, but instead felt heat glowing from inside. It was strange, but she didn’t care.
She saw Tef watching her from behind Jessie’s hair as it flew in the cold breeze.
Just a few more steps.
He smiled at her. Were those fangs in his mouth?
Tef gave Jessie a shove forward, but kept behind her.
But Jessie had understood. She dropped to the left, surprising him.
At exactly the right moment, Heather pulled Arnow’s small cocked Glock from where she’d had it tucked into the back of her panties, and put four quick rounds into Tef’s chest.
A snarl came from behind her and Lupo had done whatever the fuck he did and now the black wolf lunged and tore at Tef, who also changed, but whose wolf was mortally wounded by the silver slugs.
The two wolves grappled, air blurring around them as they changed from wolf to human and back again over and over, to gain the advantage, arms to paws and back again.
Muscles tearing, bruising, blood pulsing from jagged wounds, both screaming as humans and yelping as wolves.
But finally it was over.
Tef was under the black wolf, the man, the wolf, and it was the black wolf whose jaws tore out the weakening wolf’s throat.
Arnow was putting his vest and shirt around her, and hugging her to warm her cold skin. Except her skin was scalding. He whispered in her ear and put his arms around her while Jessie and Lupo met in a huge hug a few feet away.
Lupo’s side was a ruined mess of slashes and open wounds, blood coating his pelvis and legs.
Heather looked into Arnow’s eyes and saw something there.
Respect.
Interest.
Caring.
She shrieked, then tore out of his embrace and jumped into the black depths of Cranberry Lake.
His shouts were dulled by the cold water, which seemed to boil around her.
Jessie
Safe in Lupo’s arms, barely able to comprehend what had just happened, she saw his wounds and immediately went into doctor mode. He smiled at her gratefully, then kissed her and she thought he would never let her go.
Behind them, Arnow was still splashing in the frigid water, looking for Heather. But she was gone.
They heard a rumble, and a boat materialized through the mist.
It was DiSanto, Faber, and Arrales, wearing SWAT gear and bristling with firepower. DiSanto’s face was covered in bandages, but to Jessie he’d never looked better.
She squeezed Lupo with joy she could barely have described. But tears of grief ran freely again. Sam was gone.
“About time you got here,” Lupo said, taking the rope they tossed. “Cavalry’s late, as usual.”
DiSanto frowned. “Had to drive like the dickens to get here, man. Traffic was a bitch.”
Lupo groaned.
Dickie Klug
He wiped the fever sweat from his brow and felt the goose bumps rise on his arms like a dread disease.
His heart wanted to burst through his chest cavity.
He was filthy with gore.
He’d checked himself, desperate to make sure it wasn’t his blood. It wasn’t, but he could barely keep from screaming.
His hands shook like an addict’s.
He had finally gone into the house. He lusted for the take—it would keep him in rent and beer for a good long time, and away from the shit-ass jobs. Too many folks knew who he was, who his lazy fuckin’ cousin had been. They hated him on principle, and he hated the fuck out of them, too.
He broke into the back door, easy as fuck, and he was in a large kitchen open to the front. A weak stove light dispelled the gloom. He knew where the top-notch stereo and the big-screen television and high-priced DVD player were. But he opened a side door thinking, second television. Instead it was a freak show full of fuck-all weirdness.
Three battered military footlockers with stenciled names he could barely see because they’d been partially sand-blasted off lay in one corner. But that wasn’t what made his head spin. No, there was something else. It was out of place, which was why he looked.
A wide coffin-shaped freezer plugged into the wall and softly humming. Out of place. In the kitchen, he’d never have looked at it twice. Here, it beckoned to him like a hypnotist.
He stood in front of it, not sure whose hand it was he saw reaching out.
He opened it and held the cover up and peered down into the cold fog, plastic trays, and a deeper space below.
And backed away as soon as he had a good look.
There was a stack of butcher-paper wrapped bundles in the trays. An incongruous ice cream bucket. He read the label. Butter Brickle. But then his eyes slowly focused on the center of the main compartment. The image resolved into something…
It was a human torso.
A female human torso. The breasts stuck up at him like tiny mountain peaks, their nipples dark and full. A few curly hairs sprouted from the aureolas, and he giggled like a madman when he saw those, because then he knew beyond any doubt that it was indeed a real human torso and not a latex sex doll kept in cold storage.
He saw the jagged edges of bones and frozen arteries or whatever the hell they were sticking out of the holes at the ends, flecked with dark red just beginning to crystallize.
The cover snapped closed with a crash to wake the dead.
He couldn’t stop giggling. He snorted and broke out into a guffaw.
Fuckin’-A.
Jesus Christ.
He must have passed out, because when he thought he heard sounds from outside he couldn’t quite remember what the hell he’d been doing before he opened the freezer.
Sounds from outside.
The dogs? The tenants?
He scrambled to his feet, all thought of thievery wiped from his mind.
He retraced his steps, stumbling out of the grotesque den, back into the kitchen and out the back door he had cracked. How long ago? No fuckin’ idea.
Rustling in the trees made his blood run cold. He dove for cover, barely making the tree line and hitting the dirt with his face and chest.
Grateful he used that spray so religiously.
His night-vision goggles flipped down and turned on.
A huge dog broke through the brush near the back door. Then came a naked man who could barely walk. He was covered in blood, streaked with it as if he’d been in a war. The door opened. Another naked man came out and helped the bloody one inside. Then the guy stopped and stared at the cracked door, scanned the trees, and let out a growl Dickie would never forget.
The door closed and Dickie resumed breathing. He squirmed his way back to his stakeout spot, realizing too late that it was exactly where they had emerged. He felt and smelled the wetness. He had rolled in a pool of blood and—and some kind of thick, disgusting pus.
Jesus, it stank!
He scrambled up and took off through the trees, hoping the dogs or men or whatever he had seen didn’t decide to track him down, because he knew he could never outrun them.
He ran until he thought his heart and lungs would burst.
Later, safe in his shoddy one-room walk-up, he tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. But he couldn’t. The goose bumps wouldn’t go away. His clothes were in a reeking trash bag ready for the dump.
Dickie Klug crossed himself.
He hadn’t done that since the nuns made him.
He couldn’t erase the image: that woman’s torso, breasts thrusting up at him. No matter how much he tried. Or how much cheap brandy he guzzled.
As he slipped under a haze of artificial comfort, his memory cleared.
The dogs had turned into the men. The wounded man had been a blood-covered dog.
Dogs?
No. He’d seen
wolves before. These were wolves.
And yet they were men.
Dickie drank himself into a stupor trying to erase all the fucked-up images.
In the morning, he went fishing to help him forget.
When he saw the woman’s corpse floating in the middle of Cranberry Lake, he put his hands to his mouth.
Jesus!
He pulled his boat alongside. And when he lifted her out of the water, her eyes popped open and stared at him.
He screamed.
“Take me to shore,” she said. “And stop that yelling, for Christ’s sake.”
He clapped his mouth shut and followed her orders.
She looked familiar.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Arnow
Reports, bodies, explanations, investigations. It would all take a long time to sort out.
But the worst was knowing what he knew, and what he couldn’t tell anyone about the perps. Sure made things difficult, he pondered. But draining the pond helped divert attention from the bizarre island raid. Malko’s crimes were of a huge magnitude and stretched back over a decade. The feds and state police would be on it for years, matching DNA and remains with missing girl reports.
Bobby Lydell’s show and his hold on the local populace faded fast once Malko’s secret funding dried up. It was yet another case in which privately Malko undermined his own city. With no one to incite them, locals lost interest in the meager Indian spear harvest.
Arnow shook his head.
He wondered about Heather Wilson.
He’d really taken her death hard, only to tune in to her Wausau station two weeks later to see her filing a report about her experiences during that weekend.
He picked up the phone and made two calls.
Lupo
They sat quietly in Jessie’s cottage, listening to their “up north” music, murmuring into each other’s ears.
He had mourned Sam Waters privately. Davison had been voted to head the council, now that Eagleson was dead. The casino project was on hold, perhaps temporarily. But the void Sam left in Nick’s heart would remain forever.
No one expected to find Doc Barrett’s remains in a freezer inside the perps’ rented house, least of all Nick Lupo. Why had she followed him here?
What kind of obsession would lead her to stalk Lupo, an officer she was sworn to help? What kind of luck would lead her to cross paths with the killers? Her funeral would paint her a hero, a dedicated law enforcement officer and doctor who risked her life to carry a warning to her patient Detective Lupo. They would award her a posthumous medal, of course.
Lupo snickered. When Jessie slapped him lightly, she avoided the multitude of bandages that crossed his bruised body.
He reached for her and drew her down to the rug in front of the blazing fire. For a while it was just the two of them, the flames, and the music.
Jessie
She held him close, and they kissed as if it were the first and last time. She thought briefly of how jealous she’d been and how stupid, but as he lowered himself gently on her waiting body, she couldn’t help crying. From joy. And from sadness, too.
She’d put Eye in the Sky on repeat. “Silence and I” was just starting.
In the back of her mind, she saw an image of Heather Wilson on her television, looking radiant. She flicked it off and lost herself in Nick and the special music.
Still, her tears flowed and fell on Nick’s shoulder.
She hoped his shoulder would always be available.
And she let a smile replace the tears for a while. A long while.
CODA
The candy-apple red low-rider Chevy had been sitting in the same spot for at least fifteen minutes when the driver’s door of the silver Mazda 6 parked two spots behind it swung open.
The Mazda’s window glass was tinted and license plates were mud spattered.
After climbing out, the Mazda’s driver walked around to the sidewalk and checked the meter. The liquid crystal numerals indicated there was still time. He checked his watch, then headed west on National, his head angled toward the grimy shop windows and dingy doorways. His gait was long but unhurried, a man with a destination and perhaps an appointment, but early.
By the time he drew even with the low-slung Chevy, his eyes were locked on the Chevy’s lone passenger, who was waiting with the car. His hand slipped under the ripped denim jacket and came out with an unregistered Taurus Millennium Pro 9mm. He veered toward the Chevy suddenly and with an economy of motion eased the barrel onto the glass. The startled passenger started to whirl, and the first two slugs took him squarely in the face as he turned. The third entered the top of his skull, and the fourth took him high in the chest just before he slumped into his seat, jiggling and convulsing, his mouth open and filled with blood and worse. His head was a burst balloon and his body had begun to smoke as if on fire.
A small cagelike brass catcher held the spent cartridges after they were ejected.
The Mazda’s driver glanced around, slipped the clean Taurus back under his jacket, and sauntered back to his car. He slid in, started up, and nosed out onto the deserted street.
After three quick turns he pulled into a used car lot. Groaning, he stripped himself of the holster and pistol, tossing them as far away from his body as possible. His hands were on fire, fingertips and palms sizzling as if pressed onto a hot griddle. His chest was seared where the Taurus had rested.
He slipped out of his seat, leaving the keys, slapped a carlot sticker on the Mazda and let himself into the black Maxima parked in the next slot. Already the skin of his hands and fingers felt cooler. He tore off the crinkled piece of latex that had covered his features and tossed it on the passenger seat. He started up and backed out slowly, reaching Mitchell just as a lone siren began converging.
Later, the car would disappear and resurface sporting a new paint job. A favor called in. Playing with the devil.
Dominic Lupo struggled to breathe normally. It was difficult with his hands and chest burning as if dipped in lava. But his pain would eventually diminish. The silver-coated slugs he had used in the clean Taurus would keep the thug dead. Nobody would notice the unusual slugs, not in an obvious south side gangland hush killing.
He couldn’t allow a hardened criminal to turn wolf.
Lupo sighed through the tears.
Welcome to the Dark Side.
Welcome to hell.
In Rib Mountain State Park, west of Wausau, the moon glazed the treetops with liquid silver.
A howl split the darkening night. It frightened every furred animal within earshot.
She howled again, declaring her delight at the explosion of senses that had caught her for the third time. She felt each of her muscles tighten and relax in a sort of internal inventory. A cool breeze ruffled the thick fur on her back and made her skin tingle. She started to run on four paws, alive and excited and free for the first time ever.
She wanted to mate. She lusted for a mate.
But first she lusted for fresh meat.
The possibilities were endless.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to many people, among them my editor Don D’Auria and everyone at Leisure, my agent Jack Byrne, and my fellow writers David Benton, Jay Bonansinga, Gary Braunbeck, Judy Bridges, John Everson, J. A. Konrath, Richard Laymon (I miss you, my friend), Deborah LeBlanc, Edward Lee, Tom Piccirilli, Brian Pinkerton, Harry Shannon, Michael Slade, Tamara Thorne, Robert W. Walker, Christopher Welch, and Mark Zirbel. You guys are truly inspirational in many ways.
High Praise for Bram Stoker Award Finalist W.D. Gagliani and Wolf’s Gambit!
“Wolf’s Gambit is that rare accomplishment in horror of a sequel that not only surpasses the power of the original, but turns your expectations against you at every turn. His writing has never been crisper, his suspense never more nerve-wracking, and his dry humor so consistently refreshing. Gagliani is fashioning an epic werewolf cycle here, one filled with terror, passion, violence, surprisingly
affecting sensuality, and enough fantastical twists and turns to satisfy even the most jaded horror reader.”
—Five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner
Gary A. Braunbeck, author of Far Dark Fields
“A great big bloody beast of a book that enthralls the reader on multiple levels. Vicious, gory, sexy, fascinating—part supernatural thriller, part police procedural, pure dynamite!”
—Edward Lee, author of The Golem
“Wolf’s Gambit is the equivalent of a North Woods rollercoast-er—with each brutal twist the body count rises, but you never want the ride to end! This one goes for the throat over and over again, and as you slip through the slayings with Detective Lupo in a desperate race against time, the pages seem to turn themselves! I couldn’t put it down!”
—John Everson, author of Sacrifice
“If you’re looking for the same-ol’-same-ol’ werewolf story, W. D. Gagliani’s Wolf’s Gambit is definitely not for you. Gagliani takes a rehashed theme and breathes new life into it with a cast of memorable characters and relentless suspense. Wolf’s Gambit is one book you won’t put down, and it’s a story you’ll never forget.”
—Deborah LeBlanc, bestselling author of Water Witch
Praise for Wolf’s Trap!
“Gagliani knows horror fiction and he has supplied us with a skillfully crafted piece of dark literature.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Gagliani has brought bite back to the werewolf novel…Wolf’s Trap is a hirsute werewolf story that will grab you by the reading jugular and keep you clawing the pages until the story’s exciting conclusion.”
—CNN.com Headline News Book Lizard review
by James Argendeli
“This novel is by turns tough, suspenseful, poignant, surprisingly erotic, and, finally, beautifully measured. It can rightfully take its place alongside Harry Shannon’s Night of the Werewolf and P. D. Cacek’s Canyons as one of the best werewolf novels of the last ten years.”
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