Wolfkind

by Stephen Melling

  Durant poured himself a drink. “A few high school dropouts did not take out Regan and his posse. That was professional. Hell, we couldn’t have done it.”

  Serefini stood. Several wounds on his face were bleeding again. “I say we arrange the payoff on home soil. Surround them with muscle. Bring them in.”

  Durant considered. “I guess we’ve nothing to lose.”

  And then, as Serefini and Durant exchanged glances, something passed between them, something neither of them liked, and they dropped their gazes.

  Joshua was grateful for the severe weather, for when he finally reached Hector Kelvecion’s home in Pacific Heights, even the most ardent sightseers had deserted the rain-lashed streets. Hastily erected police do-not-cross tape cordoned off the property and a section of sidewalk. Several of the yellow strips blew loose in the wind.

  He turned off Sunset Boulevard onto Salerno Drive, slowed the car and glanced up at the house. A solitary uniformed officer stood beneath the porch, sheltering from the rain. The officer stepped into view and jerked his thumb up the street, no doubt taking him for a curious citizen indulging in a spot of gruesome sightseeing.

  Joshua continued for half a mile along Salerno and then, rain battering the Camaro’s rooftop, U-turned and pulled into the curb beside a palm tree. With the wipers switched off, the windshield became instantly opaque. The headlights of an Explorer ghosted by him. Joshua waited until the taillights dissolved before stepping out into the rain.

  Staying as far away from the road as he could, he skirted the hedges and fences and headed west. Fifty yards from Kelvecion’s house, he stopped and sheltered beneath overhanging boughs of a Eucalyptus. Rainwater rippled down the bark and joined the dirty torrents sluicing along the gutter, which was then swallowed up by the gargling drain. A brand new Adidas training shoe bobbed along on the current like a kid’s boat until it became trapped in the mouth of the storm drain.

  Joshua peered round the trunk. Kelvecion’s house sat in a half acre of landscaped gardens, reasonably sheltered from the road by several date-palms, jacarandas, and trellises bearing masses of flower. The east side of the property opened out into clusters of dwarf shrubbery, lawns and flowerbeds. The neighboring property was surrounded by dense, unidentifiable shrubbery-gone-wild, protected by a wrought iron fence that sat atop a seven-foot high stone wall.

  He looked up and down the road once more and, satisfied he was not being watched, took three short running steps, leaped up and grasped the top rail. He dangled briefly before vaulting nimbly over, landing quietly beside a large rhododendron. After quickly orienting himself he moved stealthily into the shrubbery west of the property until he reached the party wall.

  Here he was afforded a view of the lawyer’s rear garden, which lay sunken twelve or thirteen feet below. A manicured lawn swept through several kidney-shaped flowerbeds, past a fishpond with floating lily pads, terminating at a large natural-stone slab patio. French windows occupied a full one third of the rear wall.

  Balanced atop the wall, holding onto the railing, he scanned the property for signs of life; each window reflected only blackness. Rain hammered the land, gushed along guttering and through downspouts, overflowing at the drains and spilling onto the patio.

  Confident that he remained undetected, Joshua stepped off the wall into space and dropped thirteen feet into the garden. He landed with a dirty splash, hurried across the lawn and pressed himself against the wall near the French windows.

  At waist height, he noticed the pane of glass nearest the handles was missing. Slim wooden beading that once surrounded the pane had gone, picked clean away. A draughty black square remained, which the rain angled through. Plastic ties secured the doors.

  He reached through and snipped the ties with his fingernails. Directly the tension went out of the doors a gust of wind blew them wide open. Joshua threw out his hands and grabbed them as they swung outwards. Still holding the handles he stepped onto the squishy doormat, closed the doors behind him and wedged a tubular chrome kitchen chair under the handles. No lights burned inside the house.

  With the doors secured, the sound of the storm became subdued. Joshua stepped cautiously across the kitchen, leaving a water trail in his wake. His heart started to pound.

  The house reeked of death.

  It hung in the air like the residue of burnt toast. He homed in on the source. A jumble of residual odors left by those who recently beheld the corpse of Hector Kelvecion was present. Joshua absorbed their horror and revulsion.

  He entered the living quarters and froze.

  On the floor, measuring three feet in diameter, a patch of congealing blood and strings of human tissue stained the carpet. The fibers were matted. He raised his head, following the dizzy lines of arterial spray spattered over the walls, several oil paintings, a grandfather clock and a large antique mirror.

  A grim image entered Joshua’s mind: Hector Kelvecion dancing a grotesque fandango around the room, watching himself die in the mirror, surrounded by laughing renegades. The unfortunate lawyer, during the final seconds of his life, must have thought hell had come to claim him.

  Joshua stood upright, heart thumping and rain dripping from his hair as he faced his reflection in the bloodstained looking-glass. No more guessing. Everything about this murder bore the hallmark he sought: the skilled, undetected entry; the grisly method of snipping the carotid artery; and the decapitation. These alone were conclusive, yet there was more…

  The renegades left a unique biological signature. Invisible to the scores of policeman, forensics and the paramedics, the signature was olfactory and detectable only by hyper-senses. To Joshua the sign was unmistakable. Renegade scent hung in the air like ground mist, clinging to everything; the carpets; the walls, though concentrated mainly in the blood. Traces of their saliva, though no longer carrying antigens specific to renegades, were still present in the lawyer’s congealed blood. A toxicology report would reveal nothing abnormal in the saliva, for all renegade excretory products – blood or saliva, reverted to the human equivalent after a few minutes.

  Joshua swallowed thickly. Barlow was right about Los Angeles; the renegades were here and they were, well – using it.

  He felt compelled to spend a few moments standing in the blood-stained room. Then he turned, leaving as stealthily as he had arrived.

  Back in his room at the Hollywood Jewel, Joshua stripped out of his wet clothes and dumped them in a pile in the bathroom. Naked except for the wolf’s head amulet, he walked back and forth, drying his hair with a towel. The phone started to ring and he turned quickly. For a few seconds he stood unmoving, debating whether to answer it. Barlow – let him wait.

  Joshua continued to dry his hair while the events of the last hour raced through his mind. Since the revelation that the lawyers’ killers were unquestionably renegades, he had subconsciously contemplated the mechanics of tracking and killing them. Take up where he left off – with the Jamaicans. He already knew the location of their warehouse. And he carried the Beretta.

  Every few minutes his muse teased him with thoughts of Genna Delucio; her pretty face; her voice; her scent; her complex personality, the red wine she gave him. Remembering the fruity taste, the pleasant influence it had on his mind, he felt juices flood his mouth.

  But with unseemly haste he tore his thoughts away. He scrubbed his head briskly with the towel. A more pressing concern required his attention. He had a job to do.

  Tomorrow, when darkness fell, he would infiltrate the Jamaicans.

  Joshua awoke early to the sound of a truck rumbling along Santa Monica Boulevard. The bad dream that plagued his disjointed sleep dissolved into tenuous memory, already too vague to recall in any detail. For a few minutes he lay perfectly still, listening to the air-conditioning. On the ceiling above him a cockroach trundled busily toward the light flex, where it stopped, as though aware of being observed. Last night’s incidents filtered through Joshua’s haziness and he sat upright.

  Once dressed,
he sat by the phone rubbing his chin, contemplating calling Barlow. Last night, after he returned from Kelvecion’s house drenched to the skin and had begun to peel off the wet clothing, the phone rang several more times. But he had neglected to answer it. This morning its silence seemed to taunt him.

  Joshua turned away, opened the blinds and looked out. Morning pressed coolly against the glass, a cunning deception of the blistering heat behind its back. Light traffic rolled by on the boulevard. He saw no signs of activity on the promenade or on the sundeck. All the unit doors were closed. He let go of the blind and wandered back into the room, twiddling his fingers, tapping his feet.

  Come nightfall he would leave his apartment with the Beretta and head South toward Inglewood. Take a close look at the Jamaicans. But sunset was twelve long hours away. He paced the floor, peering now and then at his reflection, debating with himself how he should pass the time until nightfall. Of course the wisest move would be to remain indoors and out of sight.

  Eventually, thoughts of Genna Delucio drifted into his mind; not merely her company but the very concept her very humanness. He supposed that in one way they were very much alike. He was as much prisoner of his world as she was a prisoner of hers.

  So why not simply pack her bags and leave? What held her to this city? Joshua had made her acquaintance as she left the hospital; had she an illness treatable only in Los Angeles? Genna Delucio suffered from no such illness. He knew the signs only too well. Barlow, who for years had suffered colon cancer, emanated its dark inhabitancy from every pore.

  Genna Delucio displayed no symptoms of having, or of incubating, any kind of physical disorder. Her mind, however, harbored something rotten. Though she conveyed a strong will, her demeanor occasionally swung in the other direction and she transmitted a conflicting set of signals. Joshua sensed that her despair grew from an almost irresistible desire to flee; not only from her physical environment but also her psyche; a dark corner of her mind where something festered, eating away at her spirit. But the desperation hadn’t bested her yet. Joshua hoped it never would.

  With the blinds drawn and the lights and the television switched off, he lay motionless, staring implacably at the cockroach, wondering if perhaps the creepy crawly was returning the stare. Maybe the critters were mind readers; which would explain the unerring ease with which they managed to evade a well-aimed boot-heel or rolled newspaper.

  Genna…

  His thoughts wandered directionless. He found it hard to concentrate for longer than a minute. “The Jamaicans,” he said to himself. If all he found were humans, be them good or bad, he would slink away. If he encountered renegades, then the Beretta would be ready to follow. Swift and clinical. One renegade, one silenced bullet. Chm! In and out. Should there be more renegades than rounds of poisoned ammunition, then he would revert to the original method: hand to hand combat.

  Genna Delucio

  Genna Genna Genna

  “Damn it.” he swung his legs to the floor, went over to the mirror, leaned in.

  You are not human.

  But you look human.

  NOT HUMAN!

  But you look...

  Not……..

  Inhaling deeply, he flexed the latent power. His muscles snapped instantly alive and his senses became infinitely sharper. He heard the buzz of the refrigerator’s motor, the scuttling of unseen cockroaches, the drone of a solitary mosquito. A subtle alteration rippled through his features and his eyes radiated a distinctive scarlet tinge. The topography of his face shifted.

  Not human! Not! Not human!

  He flexed the inner muscle again, casting his sensory net further afield; to the lapping of the outdoor pool; the splashing of its gleeful occupants; a phone conversation several units away; the newspaper cuttings rustling in a draft. He tracked a set of footsteps along the line of units. He waited for the usual rattle of coins in the coke machine. It never came.

  Someone knocked on his door.

  Joshua spun so quickly the chain around his neck hula-hooped and the amulet came to rest between his shoulder blades. A shadow played on the floor beneath his door. He looked frantically at his room, his eyes lighting on incriminating items, then back at the door.

  The knock came again. Three loud raps.

  Durant’s men? Surely not here. Half a dozen people frolicked in the pool twenty feet from his door. Gangsters were particularly bold, though not particularly stupid. Then who was it? He imagined opening the door to the withered figure of Max Barlow.

  “Hello?” A voice called.

  It was Genna Delucio.

  Forgetting himself for a moment, he jumped over the bed, quickly disengaged the lock and opened the door. Sunlight briefly dazzled him, but as his eyes became accustomed, Genna emerged from the overexposure stood in the doorway. She had on blue jeans over brown ankle boots, a cotton T-shirt and a thin, cream-colored short-sleeved cardigan. Sunglasses hid her eyes.

  Joshua noticed her shoulders drop. Indeed, her whole body slowly settled and relaxed, her sigh of relief almost pantomime. She tried to look past him into the dim room. “Hi,” she said. “I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Not at all,” he said numbly. “I was ...I was just. Genna, what are you doing here?” His hand moved to the chain around his neck, fumbling for the amulet and not finding it.

  “Guess I wanted to apologize for last night.” She looked away. “I didn’t mean to kick you out. I was upset. I’d had a long day.”

  Joshua shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “My father’s men showing up kinda freaked me out.” She glanced over at the people sitting by the pool, then back at the road. “You think we could go inside?”

  “Sure,” Joshua said, and then remembered the news-cuttings strewn across his bed. “Wait!” he blocked the way.

  Genna bumped into him and then stepped back. She peered over her sunglasses into the room’s dimness. “I’m sorry; do you have company?” Her voice carried a suspicion of jealousy. “Not that it’s any of my business, of course.” She laughed and pushed the sunglasses back on her face.

  “My room’s a bit of a junk yard.”

  “Actually,” Genna said, playing with her earlobe. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go for a ride. To that big ocean of yours, maybe. I don’t know – get a coffee?”

  Joshua gaped at her, looking like someone who expected to be pounded but had instead received a pat on the back. “Give me two minutes,” he said. “I’ll go put on a shirt.”

  “Ok. I’ll wait for you in my car.” Genna said. “I’m parked on Santa Monica.”

  Five minutes later they joined the coast road heading south. Last night’s events followed Joshua like a stray dog on the periphery of his vision. He tried hard not to look at it. Instead he watched the other motorists.

  Moderate to heavy traffic made the going slow, but Joshua was unconcerned – they were in no hurry. The farther south they drove the calmer he became.

  In Huntington Genna parked the BMW on the coast road and led the way down onto the scorched sand. Joshua looked out onto the ocean, where a dozen surfers glided in on large swells. “Surf city itself.” Genna said, pausing to remove her boots, going barefoot.

  Joshua watched this, then removed his own shoes, knotted the laces together and slung them over his shoulder, where they bumped companionably against his shoulder blades. Sunshine blazed from a cloudless sky, but the ocean breeze kept the temperature cool and pleasant. When Joshua licked his lips, he tasted sea salt. “That sure looks difficult,” he said, watching a surfer ride below the crest of a wave.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Genna followed his seaward gaze. “I think the ocean’s strictly for the fish and the Pelicans.” A large shaggy dog ran by, speckling them with sea water. Genna wiped a hand across her cheek and laughed. Then, still watching the dog as it returned to its owner, she said. “I still can’t understand why my dog accepted you so quickly. Even on a good day he’s grumpy with strangers.”

  Joshua smiled. “He’s a
good dog.” He watched the foam flowing over his toes; the seawater cool and refreshing on his skin; the heat of the sun pleasant against the back of his neck. The beach made him feel good. The day felt...

  Joshua, what are you doing? A voice in his mind asked.

  “Benji sure liked you.” Genna said. “He’s my people-barometer, like the king’s chief taster. He can figure people out a lot quicker than I can. You’re the first stranger he likes – heck, you’re the only stranger he likes.” A Blond guy with a walnut suntan rushed past them into the ocean with a bright blue surfboard under his arm, whooping with delight, paddling out toward the swell.

  “So your dog approved,” Joshua said, amused.

  “I guess he did.” Genna steadied herself with the use of Joshua’s shoulder and wriggled her toes to free a small pebble.

  By mutual consent they diverted away from the shoreline toward the entrance to a long pier. To Joshua the structure looked like the skeleton of a prehistoric insect that had waded into the ocean for a drink. Lines of matchstick people strolled along the boards or stood tilted against the railings, watching the surfers.

  “So you know who my father is, then?” she asked after a short silence. She picked up a pebble and threw it into the sea.

  Joshua stepped over a beach towel depicting the image of a huge Sun wearing raybans. “I’m not interested in your father.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” Genna said, lightening the moment by putting on an English accent. “I saw you first.”

  Joshua dropped his gaze, struck by the sudden revelation that his lying to her bothered him, the realization that each lie served only to alienate him further. For a moment the connection he felt with her started to split. He drew a deep breath and held it.

  Finally Genna turned to him, flipped up her sunglasses and searched his eyes. Joshua had to remind himself to breathe. In that moment, surrounded by everyday on-the-beach activity, he realized this girl wielded real power over him, and with it he experienced a vulnerability he found fresh and new and scary. “Being close to me is dangerous.” She said. “A friend of mine was…he was beaten up by three of my father’s men.”