Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5)

by W. D. Gagliani

  “What?” Lupo thought he knew what his own personal haunt would say.

  “Maybe at this point your father could no longer distinguish between real shapeshifters and the ones in his mind.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Franco Lupo

  August 1945

  He was watching the tenement from the rear, a gravel- and glass-strewn alley that stretched across a wide chasm to the rear of another pre-war building that bore the bullet pockmarks of battles fought with partisans. The tip had come from the same wine-soaked old sailor, who told him with a yellow grin that he hadn’t asked about the subject’s frequent destinations. For a few hundred more lire Franco had an address, though he was now out of money.

  Business came first, then his own financial situation. He wasn’t proud of the way the old drunkard, his source, had played him out of the last of his money, but he’d deal with that tomorrow. Right now he wanted to determine how many werewolves met in the walk-up apartment, and then he wanted to figure out how best to wade in and kill them all.

  The shutters were down but he knew that the fourth window from the left corner on the fifth floor was the one, the meeting place.

  He was trembling with frustrated anticipation, considering crossing the no-man’s land of the alley even though it was wide-open and he could be spotted by a lookout. He was here, the meeting was going on there. The anger made him seethe. Who knew what the bastards were discussing, planning? Who knew whether they had a captive with them on which to feed? He’d seen that once in the past year, werewolves who survived the war getting together and feeding on a prisoner. The screams still haunted him at night, the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself, or that his conscience allowed him.

  He fingered the gnarled grip of the dagger tucked in his belt. He was inclined to ignore danger and forge ahead. His feet danced in place as the evening’s chill started to seep into his bones. His collar was up, but the Mediterranean breeze was turning unseasonably cold.

  Franco stared at the window with an intensity that made his eyes burn. They started to water and he blinked away the tears, not sure whether he was angry, sad, terrified, or determined. He touched the bump in his coat made by the dagger and made up his mind. Reaching under the flap of the threadbare pea coat and slowly drawing the dagger, he stepped out of the shadows, his feet already taking him to whatever awaited in that shuttered apartment.

  Whatever happens, I will be free of this sense of uselessness…

  One step, two, and then strong hands grabbed his shoulders and held him in place.

  Startled, he struggled hard against the restraint but found that he was unable to move, his arms pinned to his sides. His hand could feel the dagger, but couldn’t move to draw its blade.

  His mouth was open, but he knew screaming wouldn’t help. His struggling turned violent, but now other hands grasped him and pulled him back into the darkness.

  His very flesh preparing to be torn and rent by iron jaws full of sharp fangs, he saw himself as a dead man. Young man, never to age. Man with a mission, never completed.

  He twisted his head around to try and see his attackers, but the hands on him kept him facing the building he’d been watching. The rough bricks scraped his face raw.

  “Damn you, finish it!” he snarled, wriggling against the powerful hands grasping him.

  “Hold your piss, shithead.”

  “Porca Madonna! If I get free—” His entire body shook with the effort of struggling against the restraints, trying to turn and see his attackers’ faces. Blood oozed from the cuts on his face.

  Then the concussion of an explosion flattened Franco and whoever held him against that same wall.

  The boom! that rolled across the alley was like a slap on his ears, the slow-motion flash seared his eyes and the heat singed his eyebrows.

  Across the way, the shutter at which he’d been staring disappeared in a spectacular ball of flame that blew out a section of the brick wall. Debris rained like shrapnel all around and several sharp chips stung his exposed skin as his body was squashed against the wall behind him and the hands loosened and he tried to belatedly cover his face from further injury by chunks of jagged masonry and glass still in the air like projectiles.

  His ears first roared, and then his hearing was suddenly gone and intense pain lanced through his eardrums and into his brain pan.

  When Franco managed to reopen his eyes painfully and try to comprehend what had happened, he was able to make out one of his attackers.

  Corrado!

  Chapter Twelve

  Heather

  She galloped down a claustrophobic alley on four paws, keeping to the shadows and trying to get her body healed while she thought through the problem.

  She knew she needed to heal before changing back to human form just for the pragmatic reason that the pain would be almost unbearable. But she had to stay away from her car and her clothes. And either one or the other could be found by the crime scene investigators after the scene was secured, complicating her problem in various ways.

  Of course, securing the scene would take some time. There were dead people all over the sidewalk, there was a lot of spent brass lying in coagulating pools of blood, and there was no way for the cops to know whether the situation was over. The tactical squad would be the first logical arrival as they secured the area and made sure there were no more shooters.

  But they wouldn’t shoot a dog, would they? No reason to. And to most people, especially in poor light and at a glance, she would look like a dog.

  She decided to make a large circuit and sneak her way back into the crime scene, write off the clothing, reach her car and change—and pull out hopefully before being spotted as a naked female.

  She set off, determined to make her plan (such as it was) work.

  But by the time she felt healed enough to force a change and return to her own lovely human form, the tactical squad had fanned out to cover most of the block.

  And her car was located within the police perimeter.

  Fuck their efficiency!

  Heather rethought her plan.

  She’d never felt bound by morality or the drive to do the right thing. She’d read Alistair Crowley and, even if she wasn’t one of those who supposedly followed the occult magician, she could relate to his basic tenet: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

  And so she angled around until she had mapped out a roundabout path and followed it, keeping to the shadows. The wolf’s body looked sufficiently like that of a dog that the armored cops who spotted it, after flinching at the motion, simply watched it pass as she had expected. She kept to the outer edge of their perimeter, switching from sidewalk to street and back, darting between parked cars, occasionally passing right before the hard gaze of men and at least one woman whose hands held submachine guns up to their shoulders ready to fire.

  When the wolf had reached the farthest point of the perimeter and passed the final armored officer, she noted that he simply turned his back on her, keeping his eyes fixed on the inside of the perimeter. Presumably he was in contact with the rest of the team through the tiny microphone angled in front of his lips, but he appeared to be listening to orders rather than issuing them.

  She doubled back behind him, stalking him as if he were a deer, and stealthily reached a spot just a yard or two from his armored back. Tall yellow letters stood out on the black of his uniform jumpsuit and vest, and Heather made the wolf concentrate on that as a target. She crouched and tightened like a spring.

  Waiting…

  With a single low snarl, the wolf lunged.

  The cop was taken completely by surprise as the wolf’s near two hundred pounds of muscle and bone landed on the back of his neck, the impact instantly fracturing both left and right clavicles with a loud snap! that echoed across the street.

  Dropping forward, his submachine gun rattling out of his grasp and clattering out of reach on the sidewalk, the cop managed only a loud grunt and, before he could gather his v
oice for the automatic pain-triggered scream, Heather’s wolf jaws had closed around the exposed area of his neck and torn first in one direction and then the other.

  Her strength as an oversize wolf was tremendous, and the cop was dead literally seconds after the incredible shattering pain from his ruined flesh reached his brain. His ruptured jugular gushed like a pressure hose and the metallic tang of his blood invaded her nose.

  She lapped up a tongue-full, but then exerted enough control to pull the wolf away despite its immediate bloodlust.

  His comm unit squawked in loud distress as the team leader shouted questions, questions the cop would never have a chance to answer.

  Heather forced a change and she was over in a split second, her naked human form as lithe and graceful as the wolf’s.

  She leaped over the twitching corpse and snatched up the MP5. As a journalist and adventuress (as she referred to herself) she’d made sure to learn the ins and outs of a wide variety of firearms. Finger on the trigger, she aimed at a row of windows on the second floor of a storefront across the street. Her first short burst ripped through a section of wall, but her second shattered a window, then a second as she held and raked the gun sideways. Hot brass splattered out of the breech and clattered all around her as she emptied the magazine.

  The cop’s comm unit came to life with the tinny sounds of excited, inquisitive voices.

  But by then Heather had ditched the MP5. She forced another change, went over, and then the wolf was running full tilt away from the dead cop and back into the shadows, heading first for the Explorer and then for where her car was parked.

  As she’d expected, the rest of the tactical team rushed to the aid of their fellow cop, following the sound of the gunfire and shattering glass—as well as his sudden radio silence.

  In her wolf form she slinked past the converging cops and used the shadowy areas of the street to reach her car without being seen—or, having been glimpsed, most likely ignored.

  She visualized herself human again, and the DNA realignment happened instantaneously. It never failed to thrill her, and the chemicals released by the transition tingled through her system as they always did, leaving her parched and…horny.

  She laughed quietly as she dived into the car, scrabbled in her bag for her keys and turning over the ignition, barely waiting for the engine to start and then doing a no lights slow-motion U-turn out of the space and heading away from the crime scene.

  Heather felt a slight tug of sorrow at having killed the cop, but there was little she hadn’t already done or contemplated doing while seeking her own survival, and she’d just chalk it up to one of those end-justifies-the-means rationalizations of which she was queen. He had to be sacrificed to ensure her survival, especially given what her source had to tell her. What he had given her.

  She drove slowly, avoiding the urge to floor the accelerator and get the hell out of there. Sirens were beginning to converge from all directions, it seemed, and tearing away in the opposite direction was one sure way to be noticed. Surprised at how easy her escape had been, she started to obsess.

  If they’d been more on top of things, she imagined the cops would have tried riddling her car with slugs, but probably her surprise maneuver had worked so well they’d simply not had time to process the diversion.

  Her vision blurred and she swerved a little toward the center line before she corrected and tried to blink the blur from her eyes. The windshield was like water in a fish tank, distorting everything and making her very uncomfortable.

  The sudden carnage had amped up her blood, but maybe now she was coming down and it was a little like standing straight up from a crouch, blood rushing away from the head, making her almost dizzy.

  The spell lasted a few seconds, long enough to keep her speed under the limit. A police cruiser, siren screaming, tore around a corner up ahead and careened toward her and fishtailed back into its lane as it hurtled past, its grim-faced passengers scanning her in the few seconds they had. She was low in her seat, in shadows, and they would have had to be using night-vision goggles to see she was naked.

  As Heather’s vision cleared, and the cruiser full of cops disappeared in her mirror, she realized that if that first tactical squad had managed to record a few license plates at the scene, her safe car was no longer safe.

  “Fuck!”

  Time to find alternate transportation.

  Heather’s blood sang in her veins.

  Sometimes she really loved her life.

  She was still clutching the flash drive her source had died to get her.

  Now to see what was on it.

  Lupo

  An hour’s digging resulted in more of the same, folders containing information that seemed to reflect surveillance records stretching back to after the end of the war in Italy, which was nevertheless still during the war for most of Europe.

  Lupo stood in the center of the storage space, hands on hips and gazing at the file cabinets, and tried to visualize his father standing where he now stood. Perhaps seeking out certain information. Perhaps adding to it. Or maybe simply reliving days that up until now his son had never suspected existed, even though he knew his father had traveled while still a young man. He’d become a cabin boy on ships immediately after the war and had spent twenty years at sea in various capacities. But now there appeared to be a new narrative he had to apply to his father’s life story.

  There was something nagging him, though, something he had noticed in a fleeting moment that had dissipated all too quickly.

  What the hell had he seen?

  Lupo turned and there was Ghost Sam, leaning on a nearby file cabinet. Of course he wasn’t really leaning, but his image seemed to be. Whenever he manifested (or Lupo’s brain conjured him), he seemed to do typical things, act in ways anyone could relate to.

  “What?” Lupo said, annoyed. Ghost Sam popped in and out and occasionally Lupo was just tired of the whole thing. He wondered if his brain was splitting into two personalities. Was he Ghost Sam?

  “Nah, you’re not me,” the ghost said, apparently reading Lupo’s thoughts. “You only wish.”

  Lupo snorted. “I sure wish my haunt would stop fucking insulting me.”

  “Then there wouldn’t be any reason for me to keep showing up and saving your ass.”

  “Just get on with it,” Lupo muttered. “You came back, so you must have something to say. Or maybe I have something to say and my brain needs to hear it coming from you, even though you’re dead. I get it. So let’s move on.”

  “All right, all right,” Sam’s ghost said, waving a placating hand. “I did have something to add. You figure this stuff’s been here for years, right?”

  “Uh, yeah. I mean, look at how much there is. I remember seeing this storage company years ago, and if I could get a court order, I’d bet this space has been rented for years. I’m gonna talk to the manager.”

  “Okay, but unless this material was just brought here recently, you’d expect it to be covered with dust, right?”

  Lupo groaned. Of course! That was it. He smacked himself in the head. That was what he had noticed, but only subconsciously. The tops of the files were dusty. But the rest of the storage space was not, really. There was a thin layer of dust he could see on top of the file cabinets and other flat areas, like the top boxes on some of the stacks.

  But it was not a lot of dust.

  “Shit, can’t believe I missed it,” Lupo said.

  “That’s why I hang around,” Ghost Sam pointed out smugly. “Told you.”

  Frank Lupo had been dead a couple years now.

  So who had been dusting the place?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Franco Lupo

  August 1945

  The explosion had muffled his hearing. A pile of cotton had somehow grown between his ears.

  He shook his throbbing head, trying to clear it. Trying to get back his hearing. His ear drums screamed and he wondered if there was blood dribbling out of them. He couldn�
�t tell—his skin had lost its sensitivity. Pain lanced through a dozen scrapes on his face and chin. A curtain of gauze also made sight blurry.

  He tried to think through the haze.

  Then he remembered.

  Corrado had done this.

  The last time he had seen Corrado…had been around the time of his father’s death.

  Around the time you killed your own father.

  His father had become a werewolf. He had to be killed, to restore his human soul.

  His head spun as well as throbbed.

  The explosion.

  He blinked his eyes rapidly. Images began to sharpen again.

  Across the way, the building he’d been watching now had a huge black hole in its side, and tall flames licked through the jagged opening, blackening the stonework around it. Windows up and down the block had been blown out and now looked like empty eye cavities. A bloody face was visible here and there, cautiously peering from behind the damage. People on the street were picking themselves up slowly, painfully.

  He looked for and found Corrado, unchanged from when he’d known him. Someone else was with him.

  The three of them wiped droplets of blood from countless tiny cuts out of their eyes. Moving sluggishly, they slid back behind the cover of the building corner and another set of hands helped them stagger away from the alley.

  Next building over, still across the way from the building that had housed the meeting place, a door popped open and Corrado pulled Franco inside and down a hallway to another anonymous doorway. Inside a huge mostly empty apartment, a small group of ex-partisans huddled around a lopsided table. The ceilings were high and the floors made of marble despite the building’s tenement status. Most old buildings were built to last no matter how rich or poor their tenants.

  “Che cazzo…?” What the fuck?

  Franco should have been glad to see his old partisan comrade and brigade leader Corrado, but instead his hands snatched Corrado’s lapels and he snapped the older man’s body against the wall.

  “What did you do? You fool, you probably didn’t kill anyone. They are wolves, Corrado, you fuck, and their wounds heal, so they all survived—”