Like using an axe on Nick’s foot one very bad day.
Like using a crossbow or a shotgun to kill.
Like having sex with a lovely man who also happened to turn into a werewolf, sometimes not so intentionally.
Okay, it was great sex…but still, it was—like all those other things—something that required some kind of strength beyond the everyday.
She had that strength, in spades.
Well, then why was her skin itching and feeling as if ants were crawling all over it?
She scratched for all she was worth, hoping no one who passed through would notice.
She nodded at Sally, a nurse who may have given her a second look. She smiled at Doctor Gorgeous (no, his name was Gregorius, a new hire), hoping he wasn’t frowning at her.
It seemed like a moment later she had dumped the drink in a trash can and was headed across the way to the casino’s main entrance.
I’m just gonna go look for a while.
Her therapist had told her she could work her way up to walking into the casino and watching, like arachnophobes could benefit from seeing spiders up close or something, but she was jumping the gun.
Barely knowing how it had happened, suddenly she was sliding her player’s card into a slot machine. Her ears were full of the C Major chord constantly playing, ringing, beeping, tinkling, throughout the cavernous space filled with aisles full of games.
She was at a game called Wolf Run (irony!) and watching the red credits drop as she pressed the Max Bet button over and over.
Nick had no idea she’d held on to the card. Nor did her therapist.
Jessie pressed Max Bet until she had lost a whole hundred whatever they were. Quarters? Dollars? She wasn’t sure.
She wanted to cry.
Strong in every fucking thing in life, but this thing, this stupid habit, was beating her.
She cashed out, snatched her card from the slot when it reluctantly peeked out, and strode toward the door, thoroughly disgusted with herself.
Maybe it was good she’d come, and was now removing herself with determination. Had to count for something, right?
Then she spotted a Wheel of Fortune slot and granted herself a spin. What the hell? Maybe she could make up what she’d lost. Then she would leave. Really, for sure.
The tall machine towered over her, basically a typical three-panel slot married to a small wheel of fortune set directly above that was styled on the one on the syndicated TV game show, where a straight-across-the-screen win could be multiplied depending on the spin that was granted. It was one of a pod of four facing the compass directions.
She was vaguely aware that a two men were directly opposite her, one seated and the other hovering over his shoulder. They were smoking, which made her nostrils twitch, but even though she disapproved she’d become accustomed to the casino’s smoking environment, which did not have to follow state indoor smoking laws. Besides, it was the price of doing business…as if losing cash to the House was somehow constructive.
Jessie wrestled with the urge, but slid her card into the slot anyway, getting an almost primal sexual thrill from it.
Her therapist said it might have something to do with the danger she’d faced so often, being with Nick, and she was reacting by finding a safer (but almost as unhealthy) outlet in the gambling.
Whatever!
She spun the cylinders and watched them until one after the other stopped. Three different icons. Without thinking, she spun again on Max Bet. This time all three cylinders stopped on the BAR-BAR icon and her credit total zoomed up. The wheel of fortune above came to life and played the theme music and she pressed the Spin button, which brought her a doubling of the credits, a win of probably seventy-five dollars.
She spun it again.
Winning held little thrills for her, though she was damned if she understood why.
The two guys on the other side had leaned over to look when the machine had signaled her win, then they’d ducked back behind their own machine. Probably trying harder now that they know it can be done.
She forced herself to stand, cash out and pull her card, then stepped over to a nearby slot machine island and circled it, looking for a specific model with which she’d had good luck. She spotted the quarter machine and settled into the seat. Idly she noticed that she was now directly behind the two guys at the Wheel of Fortune, but somewhat hidden by her machine and those next to it.
She slid in her card. Waiting as it totaled up, her ears picked up what one guy was telling the other.
“Look, dontcha think we should get back to the boss before it gets too late? Remember the time difference between here and Vegas?”
“Chill out, man. I need to make up for that last loser. You saw that chick win on these, right? I’ve heard they pay slightly better.”
“Okay, Johnny, I’m just sayin’ the boss is kinda impatient.”
The machine made its sounds and Jessie was fascinated with seeing if the guy was going to win, so she ignored her own machine’s blinking come-on and eavesdropped shamelessly.
The guy playing, Johnny, was a slightly too old pretty-boy type wearing a lightweight black blazer. He had longer-than-average dark hair slicked back so it stayed out of his way, but it emphasized his receding hairline. Though his features were sharp, he might have been considered a hunk maybe ten years ago.
Jessie felt guilty rating guys like this, but hell, didn’t they do it with women all the time? She mentally compared him to Nick and found him wanting in every way, so that was something.
The other guy, the nervous one who wanted to call the boss like they were supposed to, was shorter and dumpier, and younger too, a sidekick type if ever there was one. He was wearing a distressed leather jacket over a red polo and black jeans. His features were soft, maybe too sedentary a life, and his skin was bad from childhood acne. His hair was short but shaggy and the kind of blond that was a bit too neon to be real. He looked around nervously as if he didn’t want them spotted, but had apparently forgotten Jessie sneaking in behind them.
For some reason, call it a hunch, she found herself sliding her chair a little to the right so she could hide more of herself behind the slots, but could still peek around the corner and see them. Their voices weren’t loud, but by a weird trick of the room she could hear them better than people on the other side of her island.
Johnny kept betting and his cylinders kept giving him losses. She saw him slide more cash into the slot.
“Christ, Johnny, you wanna lose that hundred? These games are rigged, man.”
“Just—shut up, Marty, I’m gonna try a few spins.”
“Hell, why not wait until the merger goes through? Then you’ll be able to play every fuckin’ day until you run outta money.”
“Yeah, the merger,” Johnny said contemptuously. He laughed. “When the cash starts leaking out of this joint it ain’t gonna look much like a merger, just a huge drain guzzling right up into the boss’s basement. We get a fat bonus, some folks here get their Cayman accounts fatted up, everybody’s happy. The boss’ll be a silent partner, see, and he’s gonna suck this place dry. This tribe’s not on federal land so they don’t have to show their books and when the boss leans on people they do what he wants them to. No one’s gonna know the money stream’s going in a different direction, and no one can swoop down here and check. We’re gonna be on staff to facilitate operations. I love this corporate bullshit.”
Suddenly the overwhelming, perpetual C Major chord in all its bleating, blooping and bleeping jangle faded away in her ears and all she heard was the two nearby voices.
“Yeah, but we’ll be stuck in this backwater. I’d rather be in Vegas any day, man.”
“You seen the place we’ll be living in? It’s like a mansion. And the chicks here aren’t half bad.”
Jessie leaned back a little and tried to pretend she was playing her machine, but her eyes shifted to where the two lounged.
Her heart raced.
“Yeah, yeah
, all you care about is the chicks. You seen any night life in fuckin’ Eagle River? The place is a dump. Tourist trap, T-shirt shops, dive bars. Man, give me Vegas or the Big Apple, okay?”
“Well, you know the boss’ll rotate us out in ’bout a year, when he’s got his fingers in every pie here, so we’ll have that much more cash to spend. You’re gonna love this new joint I found in Vegas—and you’re gonna need more money to have a good time there, believe me. The chicks there…let’s just say the lap dances’ll melt your balls. But it ain’t cheap, and we can sock away a nice bundle here.”
“So when does the muscle get here?” Marty said. He glanced around and Jessie leaned forward so she wouldn’t seem like an eavesdropper.
“Any day now,” Johnny said as he spun the machine. “Robb and the guys are driving. The house is almost ready, then we’ll move in and the—”
The machine went nuts.
“Hey, lookit that!”
“Holy shit, you just won two hundred bucks!” Marty said, awed.
“Let’s give the wheel a spin,” Johnny said as the TV wheel theme played. There was canned clapping and cheering from the machine’s speaker.
“Doubled!” said Marty. “You’re a lucky fucker!”
“Drinks are on me. Let’s blow this joint. There’s a topless place just outside town. It ain’t Vegas, but it’ll do. They got two tits here just like home.”
Jessie watched them as they collected Johnny’s winning ticket from the slot, complete with annoying canned fanfare music. She stood up to try following them. But to her surprise they headed right for her, not the more logical other direction. Probably lost, because casinos are intentionally made to confuse your sense of direction.
She had to turn quickly to face her machine, half-huddled over it, then pressed the Bet button, because they were going to walk right past her from behind. She didn’t want them to see her face.
Chuckling like hyenas, they sidled past the narrow aisle and she felt their gazes sizing her up. It was all she could do to avoid turning to stare right at them.
One of them—Marty, she thought—stage-whispered: “I’d eat at that buffet!”
And she knew he was staring at her ass.
She felt a flush creep across her face but pretended to be engrossed in her machine, which fortunately gave her a small win right at that moment, the red numbers climbing up until the counter stopped at sixty.
“See, you gave the little lady luck,” Johnny said, clapping his buddy on the shoulder. “Let’s roll, we got some work lined up after dinner.”
“That’s what I like to hear…”
Their voices faded into the background jingling and the noise seemed to increase in volume, roaring in her ears almost as loudly as the blood pumping through her heart.
Could it be?
Had the mob come to Eagle River?
Lupo
It was one of the older self-storage places, which made sense. Later Lupo could find out when it had been rented. He might need a warrant, but—looking at the manager’s decrepit shack—a crumpled twenty might do the trick.
But first he wanted to see the contents.
He drove up to the gate, where a swipe box was mounted. There was also a keyhole with a covered switch. He felt eyes on him from the shack even though the window was covered by vertical shades. Leaving the car running, he stepped out and pushed the key into the keyhole. It turned freely a quarter turn. He flipped open the cover and pressed the button, then released the key so it could swing back to its initial position. The gate buzzed and started to open.
Lupo drove down one of the main streets between buildings full of separate units. Each block was lettered. He was hunting for J158, noticing he’d just driven past block F. He turned at the first crossroads and followed the letters. The blocks mostly looked the same from the outside. Finally he spotted block J and pulled up at the main door. He stared at it for a few minutes before walking up.
Once again, his key let him into the outside door. The corridor stretched out before him, dimly lit, with numbered, shuttered units on both sides. He found 158 quickly enough.
He stood at the door, heart pounding insistently.
Shaking his head, he held out the key. There was a sense, excited as he was, that once he opened the door he could never go back. He could never unlearn whatever waited for him in the long, narrow unit.
Did he want to know?
Did he want the responsibility?
This was where, in a movie, he’d learn that his father had been a serial killer or something equally disturbing. He barked a short laugh. He’d learned from his dying mother that his father had been a serial killer of sorts—a killer of werewolves. He’d been made one by circumstances beyond his control. He’d been turned into a murderer. He’d murdered Nick’s grandfather, hadn’t he?
His own father.
Lupo thought he understood his father’s bitterness now. He wondered how much better their relationship would have been if Frank Lupo had shared his life’s experiences with his son, instead of shutting him out.
But he hadn’t, preferring to remain grim and silent.
He knew with certainty that his father would have killed him, had he realized his son had become a monster. He had that silver-loaded Beretta shotgun, and with it he had helped trap and kill Andy Corrazza, the neighbor boy who had been the innocent carrier between Sam Waters’ son and Nick. Thankfully Frank Lupo’d never tried to take his son shooting, for Nick was sure he couldn’t have hidden his painful aversion to the silver.
Lupo shrugged.
“Come on, Nick, what are you waiting for?” Ghost Sam’s voice from behind his shoulder was somehow comforting rather than startling. “Let’s see what your old man was up to. You’ve wondered for years what was up with him, so why wait now? Why put it off?”
Lupo nodded, steeling himself. Then he turned the key and opened the door.
Chapter Seven
Franco Lupo
August 1945
The ramrod-straight figure had passed his hiding place only a minute before. He followed from a distance.
The cobbled street was deserted and Franco stayed well back, using the sound of his quarry’s boots on the bricks to orient himself. He tried to stick to the shadows but jumping from one dark spot to another would make him more visible, not less, so he hung back and let his ears do the work. The shuttered store fronts gave little shelter in any case, and he was afraid he would lose his only connection to a group of them.
Sometimes Franco couldn’t even think of the word that described them, so he thought only of them, and of his hate. The all-consuming hate he felt for the monsters who had killed his father.
In the darkest part of the night, Franco knew he had killed his father. He knew what he had done, but he had convinced himself it had been his battle for his father’s very soul, and therefore he would be forgiven.
But he might never forgive himself.
Now he hoped he could use this one to lead him to a nest of other monsters. Once he knew where they congregated, he would target them one by one and finish the job he had started during the war.
He came to a turn, not quite a corner, where the more modern street followed the slope of the land down toward the docks. There was a haze of light farther down the street, the first environs of the great sprawling port. It was probably a work area lit by floodlights.
Then Franco realized that he was alone on the sidewalk. He was still heading downhill, still on the way to the docks, but somehow his quarry had disappeared. He slowed and scanned the neighboring buildings. Several ancient block-like structures with few windows, one rebuilt since the end of the bombings, an empty lot where a warehouse once stood…and a number of shuttered doorways in the block he had just passed. The empty lot, however, was in shadows cast by the relatively low buildings around it, forming a sort of alley. He was even with it now, slowing his steps, and coming to a stop.
And just as he scanned the empty dark space he heard the
growl, and in a flash his eyes captured the image of a white-skinned tall naked man, his penis erect and huge, blurring into that of a lean but muscular wolf in midair, a leap that would connect with Franco in a split second.
Its eyes blazing and wide-open jaws snapping, the wolf was already at the end of his trajectory when Franco’s stunted reaction finally allowed him to finish drawing the blade from its wooden scabbard.
His sideways slash connected with the monster’s matted fur as he shouldered the great head aside and the jaws snapped in midair. As the snout turned back toward him, the tip of the blade sank into the wolf’s belly and Franco’s arm followed through and the blade zipped the animal open. A great rush of hot blood spattered onto Franco even as he twisted away from the beast’s flaying claws.
The monster squealed in surprise. And terrible pain…
Franco whirled so he could face the wolf when it landed, but the animal arrived off balance and its head smacked the pavement as its paws scrabbled for purchase on the smooth cobblestones.
Franco smiled grimly.
Here was a monster who wouldn’t lead him to the others of its kind meeting nearby, but neither would it ever feed on a human again. Whenever he faced one of these monstrous visions of hell his faith should have been reinforced, but instead Franco’s faith retreated further within the depths of his heart, what was left of it.
For who could accept the existence of heaven if creatures spawned from hell were allowed to walk the earth and feed on innocents?
The wounded wolf scrambled to face Franco, its slavering jaws trembling with the increasing pain. It continued squealing as the fiery burning spread through its veins and muscles and tendons.
Franco’s weapon was doing its work.
He stepped back and watched.
Since he had begun using the dagger, he had seen wounds that should have been minor in nature fester and kill. This had been a serious wound—a straight slash across the beast’s chest—and the nature of the dagger increased the damage exponentially. Sometimes the special silver set the monster’s skin and blood to burning from the inside out. Franco never felt any pity.
Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5) Page 7