Just as Johnny was about to warn about the words on her lips, a funnel cloud appeared in the air in front of the woman. The dark mass, at least ten feet high and wide, spun toward him. Its numerous fangs snapped in the air and large red eyes leered evilly from the center of it. The demon split the middle of the massive conference room table as it sped at Johnny. A few vampires and mobsters were sucked into it and spit back out in piles of mangled flesh and bone.
"Look out!" Johnny said to his men. He pushed Glass aside, who was firing madly at the demonic cloud, and Johnny punched the thing.
His fist made solid contact and it startled back. The red eyes in the wind flinched and fluttered. Then they cleared and grew angry. All of the fanged mouths howled, and Johnny feared their angry song would shatter the bulletproof windows of the conference room.
He swung again. This time, the beast caught his arm. It lifted the huge man and smashed him into the wall length window. The glass cracked and scars stretched across the pane. Johnny tried to free his arm, but the demon picked him up and sent him into the window again. The glass began to bulge outward and Johnny felt as if a thousand teeth devoured his arm.
Johnny brought his other arm around and punched the thing again. It released him and backed off. Johnny had no time to appraise his injured arm, which was barely there.
One of his men shot silver into the demon cloud. It screeched, then snatched him into its center. Johnny watched as his man- Leonard, he believed his name had been- churned inside and was reduced to a red-stained skeleton. The thing spit the remains of Leonard at Johnny.
It hesitated before attacking again and Johnny prepared himself. He reached down and snapped off Leonard's femur bone and raised it into the air.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Let's finish this!" Johnny challenged.
The demon sprang at him and then suddenly dissipated into the air, revealing the old gypsy woman behind it. Her good eye was wide in pain and surprise. Her hands gnarled and reached over her shoulders. She fell forward, and Victor stood behind her. He held onto the large butcher knife in her back as she went down. He then rushed to his master.
Johnny realized that the creature must have been exiled to wherever it had come upon the death of the gypsy. He looked around, and saw only Glass and one more of his crew alive. They pointed their weapons at the grizzly remains of men and vamps on the conference room floor.
"You okay?" Glass asked, as more security piled into the room.
"Yeah, relatively speaking," Johnny said, as Victor lingered near him.
"I want security quadrupled," he said to Glass. "Get on the horn and send Sheila to a different safe house. Preferably somewhere out of the country. Find out who is next in line to hold the building title and get a lawyer on it before morning. We have to revoke that God damn invitation. Put silver clips and holy water pistols on every man we have."
Johnny pointed to the security camera. "Take the footage and download it to my computer. I want to see if we can translate the Gypsy's spell. Might be able to make use of a monster like that one day."
Johnny pulled a cigar from his jacket. Glass lit it.
"Boss, your arm is fucked," Glass whispered.
Johnny glanced down. There was barely any muscle left on it. The bone that showed had several gnaw marks. "Get my doctor here pronto. Tell him to bring a left arm from the freeze."
Johnny glanced around at the pieces of mobsters strewn across the room. "Tell him to salvage what he can in here. Waste not, want not."
Glass delegated to one of the men and turned back to Johnny. "Who were they working for? Who is their master?"
"If it is who I think it is, we are going to have an all out war on our hands," Johnny said, sucking on his cigar. "And this little bloodbath sure as shit won't endear us to the mafia. But fuck them. They are the least of our problems."
Johnny walked to the conference room entrance, remembered something, and turned back to Glass.
"Oh, and one more thing. Find out where Sarah Accardo is spending her wedding night."
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Dreg Preview:
PROLOGUE
Deep in the Pointe Au Chien, Louisiana
Summer, 1940
The father shoved the rifle into his son’s hands. “Take it, boy. Time you learned.”
The boy, Dreg was his name, looked at the weapon. Sunlight peeked through the dense foliage of the forest and glinted off of the blue barrel of the shotgun. Dreg's father scratched his moss-like beard, peering into the forest. “Tracks go strai’ ahead,” Father said, pointing to the fresh prints in the mud that trailed toward the swamp.
“It’s getting dark. We gotta get him. If’n we don’t, he’ll get away or the gators will have him. C’mon, boy.” Father began to work his way into the forest, thin branches scraping his sweat-saturated tank top. He looked back at his son. Dreg, who was barely ten, stood rooted to his spot, staring blankly at the weapon in his small hands. Fear was in his eyes and stomach, twisting his insides around the yeast bread and honey he had eaten for breakfast.
Father stomped back to Dreg and pulled the shotgun away. He smacked the boy on the back of the head. “You got to hunt like Le Loup, boy. You got to learn to kill. Curs and jackals pick bones. Wolves have their fill o’ meat. You want to end up a jackal, boy? Begging for scraps with a tail ‘tween your legs?”
“No sur,” Dreg croaked like a frog. His throat was dry.
“You gotta hunt to survive, lessen you want to end up a purty boy, kissin’ uptown men in Orleans?”
Dreg shook his head, reaching for the weapon. Father let him have it. “Then take this and do your papa proud. Be the wolf. C’mon, boy. The sun be sinkin’ fast.”
The boy followed his father into the brush. Thorns and branches worked at his tender flesh. The ground was becoming softer with every step; swamp water filled their footprints as soon as they made them. Dreg pressed on, dogging his father’s steps, as the swamp became visible. Father paused, pressing a finger to his cracked lips. He leaned close to his son. His reeking breath, sour with dental decay and at the same time sweet with corn squeezings, splashed Dreg's face as he whispered: “Stay here, yeh-huh? I’s gonna flush him out. Aim for the head. We jes’ gonna cut it off and feed it to the gators, anyhow. Don’t let me down, boy.”
Father slinked away to the left. The brush rattled for a second, then became still as the boy’s father moved through the forest like a ghost.
Dreg stood on the bank, his hands trembling. The piece of iron in his grip felt like a steel girder. He was a good shot. Dreg could pop melons from a great distance. But melons did not run, breathe or bleed. A melon did not look you in the eye, panic stricken, or piss and shudder after you shot it. His stomach churned into a tighter knot.
The oppressive humidity of the swamp dampened his clothes. He wanted to peel off his shirt, but feared laying the gun down. The sweat that ran from his pores was contaminated by the fear curled and festering in his belly. The sweat stung his eyes and tickled his bald armpits.
Something brown and sleek dove off of a nearby stump into the swamp, disappearing under the murky water. Dreg caught the action from the corner of his eye and leveled the shotgun at the water. His heart pounded and his bladder suddenly felt full. Dreg cursed in French; though he knew Le Loup, lord above, did not take kindly to such, because now he would have to lay the weapon down to relieve himself. He was not about to risk shooting off his business while juggling the shotgun from hand to hand as he undid his fly.
He was going to lean the weapon against a tree when the treetops shook as birds pounded their wings and screeched. The whole forest came alive with activity and animal screams. Dreg’s stomach was so sour that he considered sticking a finger down his throat to let the bile free.
“He comin’ your way, boy!” Dreg’s father shouted from the distance. “Be ready, boy! Here he comes!”
Dreg really had to piss. His stomach felt as if it were going in two directions, up his throat and into h
is bowels. Despite his discomfort, the boy held the weapon poised, his throat now so dry that he couldn’t swallow. His flat, sunburned belly felt as if it were devouring itself.
“Be ready, Dreg! Be ready, boy!” his father advised from the bush.
Dreg tensed as he heard branches crack and soil slosh. Suddenly, the prey sprang from the bush. The prey froze, staring with wild eyes at Dreg. It jerked and began to bolt. Dreg pulled the trigger, driving the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder.
The prey’s throat exploded. Blood flowed from a blackened wound in its gullet down its chest. The prey gurgled as vomit poured through the hole and it fell to the mud, thrashing the swamp water with its legs. Warm urine ran freely down Dreg’s legs. He finally set the weapon down, turned and retched into the swamp. Very little came from his stomach. Though empty, Dreg still felt sick.
Father appeared from the brush and howled his approval.
“You done me good, Dreg. You done me real proud.” Father surveyed the prize, grunting and nodding at the neck wound.
“Good boy. Gator food anyhow, like I said.” Father took a ball of thick twine from a pouch on his belt. He wrapped it around the prey’s ankles, found a sturdy limb overhead and hoisted the meat off of the ground, tying the twine off around the tree’s trunks.
“C’mere, boy,” the father said, grinning with black teeth. Dreg went to his father. Dreg stared intensely at his kill as he moved. It was a man in his early twenties.
The dead man was wearing a camouflage T-shirt and corduroy pants. He was most likely a city drifter who had decided to sightsee through the untamed parts. He had probably gotten lost, driving deeper into the swamp forest than any sane city man ever would.
Dreg absently stroked the man’s sticky, brown hair. The eyes of the man, dead and glassy, were fixed on him. Dreg closed them, shuddering at the sensation of already cold flesh.
“You a wolf now, boy,” the father said, dabbing with his fingers at the dead man’s wound. He spread hardening blood on the boy’s cheek.
“I’s proud, son,” he said, and then noticed that Dreg had pissed his pants.
The father, glowing with pride, suddenly went benign. He stroked Dreg’s head gently.
“You get used to it. I shit my britches first time I killed. It hard at first, but you brave wolf.”
The father took a step back from his son.
“Show me the paw you hunt with,” he said expectantly. Dreg held up his left hand, smooth palm facing his father. The hand shook.
Father gripped Dreg’s hand with his own callused left hand. “You a traiteur, good and proper, boy. You know the secrets. You carry on wi’ the truth, pass it to yo’ cubs who have the sign of magic. Got it, boy?”
“Yes sur,” Dreg replied, feeling some pride at being the only cub with the sign of left-handedness. It made him special. It made Father look upon him more favorably than his brothers or sisters. It created a bond between he and Father that only one per new generation fully embraced and comprehended. He was the chosen one. He would carry the truth to his special cub one day.
Father embraced Dreg, holding him up toward the darkening sky. The falling sun’s final illumination caught the boy’s fair hair and beaming face, forcing him to shut his eyes.
“Le Loup!” father shouted above his son. “Hunter of hunters! Lord above! Look upon this cub! This traiteur! He has taken prey this day! Gaze upon yo’ earthly cub! He does you proud, Le Loup!”
Father let Dreg back down. The boy was overjoyed with his father’s praise.
Dreg's father took a long knife from his boot sheath. “Now, boy, I teach you to gut. Maybe you get sick, but I gotta learn you. So watch now, hear?”
“Yes sur.”
He first cut away the prey’s clothing.
“We eat like uptown folk tonight,” Father grinned, cutting into the dead man’s belly.
***
Dreg crept into the family room of the cabin. His brothers and sisters were running their dinner off outside in the sunset. His mother and father were out there as well. They sat on the front porch and enjoyed the cool breeze coming off of the swamp.
Papere was sitting in the wooden rocking chair in front of the fireplace in the darkened room. The old man slept like the dead.
Dreg’s grandfather was very old. Dreg wasn’t sure how old, but once when he asked his Mother how old Papere was, she had said he was older than dirt and that she couldn’t wait until he was put beneath it (Mother and Papere didn’t care much for one another). Papere may have been older than dirt, but his mind still had a lot of strength left in it.
That sharp mind of Papere’s held the entire history of Dreg’s family. His line had started in a country called Canada. Their blood was ancient Acadian. They were disciples of Le Loup. Their religion ran deep and stood on blood ceremonies and sacrifice. But when people started a thing called religious persecution toward Dreg’s ancestors, they fled and they came to Louisiana and the untamed swamps. Here they found freedom and seclusion from the church of the hanging man. Papere, Father and Dreg were all traiteurs, and this word meant a lot in their religion. A traiteur was a leader, hunter, provider, healer, protector and priest. A traiteur taught the philosophy of Le Loup and passed it down to those pups with the left-handed sign of magic.
Le Loup was the wolf god, and he stared down at his earthly pups with his eye, which was the moon. Le Loup demanded blood by the measure of silver in the night sky. The more the moon shined, the more the wolf rose inside and all meat was fair prey.
The family room of the cabin was hot as a furnace, but that was how Papere liked it- windows closed, drapes drawn and fireplace blazing. Papere had old people blood and this made it hard for him to be comfortable. Dreg’s grandfather preferred the warmth and said it kept the cold of the grave off of him.
It usually fell to Dreg to look after his Papere. And Dreg didn’t mind this chore. His brothers and sisters, nine of them in all, were either too young or too old for him to socialize with, but that wasn’t the main reason he didn’t associate with them that often. Dreg was different from them. He was ugly and too pale and he had wild staring eyes and crooked teeth. He endured cruel taunts from his brothers and sisters quite frequently. They called him the laid loup fantôme- ugly wolf ghost. They hurt his feelings a lot, but Papere always made Dreg feel better about things. Papere had explained that Dreg was special. He was a wild spirit trapped in man-skin.
Papere slept with an aged book gripped in his bony hands. Dreg quietly approached him. He slid the book gently from his Papere’s weak hold and opened it up. The book was old and the words didn’t speak to Dreg. He couldn’t talk with books. Only Papere and Father were able to communicate with the pages. Dreg flipped through the book which was called la magie noire de dieu- God’s dark magic. It was an antiquated bible of religious mysticism and it was also a family journal that Papere cared for. It held legends and lore, dark prayers for the night, sacred recipes for sacrificial meat and cures for curses. It was the most important thing in the house, and Papere always had an eye or hand upon it.
Dreg stopped at a particular illustration that froze him in fear and curiosity. The illustration showed a baby with evil, feline eyes.
“That be the couchemal,” Papere said softly, startling Dreg.
“It ugly,” Dreg said, fascinated. “What it be?”
“When a baby be born dead, the couchemal escapes from the baby's body,” Papere explained, arching up into his seat. “It's a water demon. If a baby dies during birth, you have to burn the body, and drain all the water nearby. Rain barrels. Troughs. It all gotta be emptied, or the couchemal will follow you for life.”
Dreg closed the book and handed it back to his grandfather.
“You the only one of the enfants around here that even cares about this book,” Papere said, putting warm eyes on his favorite grandchild. “Le Loup favors you above them others. You got more magic and more wolf than even your father. They may all try to forget the ways, but you don�
��t let them. You will lead this pack someday. And the old ways must never die, Dreg.”
“Yes sur,” Dreg replied.
The old man stretched his arms open and Dreg climbed onto Papere’s skinny lap.
“It is yo’ destiny to find the angel maker who will bear yo’ cubs,” Papere explained as Dreg got comfortable. “A louve. She wolf. A traiteur may only take a strong angel maker as mate.”
“How will I find my angel, Papere?” Dreg asked.
“She will find you,” Papere replied. “And you will know yo’ louve when you see her. She gotta bear the magic sign.”
Papere gently stretched Dreg’s left hand open.
“Speak the book to me, Papere,” Dreg said, quite insistently.
“Yes sur,” Papere complied, happily. He cracked the book open and started reading aloud.
***
It was Dreg’s seventeenth birthday, but he didn’t feel much like celebrating.
Mama was in the back room of the cabin, screaming in agony. Dreg’s brother was due, and Dreg was a little jealous that the baby was coming on his birthday.
Dreg sat in the main room of the cabin. He was joined by his father and Papere. Father sat nervously on the junkyard sofa. Papere sat silently in his handmade wheelchair. The old man had had a stroke seven months back, and he was trapped in his own head. Dreg spoke to Papere often, hoping his grandfather was still inside there somewhere. But the old man seemed as aware as the furniture in the room. La magie noire de dieu rested in Papere’s lap. It sat there most of the time, now, and Dreg feared his pack would bury the book with the old man. Father hadn’t spoken with la magie noire de dieu in well over a year. Dreg was not happy with Father’s negligence as the leader of the pack.
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