No, I wasn’t sure what that meant. It was just Storm’s way of talking. You got used to it after a while.
“They’ll need the proper weaponry and gear,” Octavius intoned.
“Oh, I’ll fix ‘em up good, Mr. Octavius,” Storm answered. He got up from his desk. He wore jeans and a dusty vest over his dress shirt, making him look like a cross between Han Solo and Clint Eastwood. Where he got dust on his vest, I had no idea.
“Thank you. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a dead body on my hands and bad news to give.” Octavius clasped his hands behind his back and pivoted toward the door, leaving us behind with Storm. He was talking about the Northington boy the she-vamp devoured.
“Dead body?” Storm said. “That don’t sound too good.”
Dead bodies rarely are.
“She-vamp,” Maddie answered. “It already got a high schooler before we showed up. Messy business. Abe put it down though. That was pretty awesome.”
I shrugged. “It was nothing.”
“Hey, I helped, too,” Zack whined. He was standing by a locked cabinet of shotguns, which was probably a better weapon for him. With the scattershot, at least he’d hit something if he aimed in the general direction of his target. But I wasn’t sure he could even do that, actually, and wasn’t too inclined to find out.
“Long story short,” Maddie said, “Zack’s missed stake did kind of save the day.”
“At the cost of my backside,” I said.
Storm chuckled, looked at Zack, and said, “You know, son, ain’t no shame in taking me up on those shooting lessons I offered a while back. It’d be our little secret.”
Zack shook his head. His very hard head, I should add. “No, thanks, Storm. I’m the best driver BEAST has. I think that more than makes up for my lack of aim.”
“So now, y’all’s goin after lycanthropes, eh?” Storm said. He walked away from the desk and stopped at a cabinet full of modified handguns. From his belt, he pulled a ring of keys attached to a bungee cord. He unlocked the cabinet. “Best defense against werewolves is…what, Abe?”
This caught me off guard. “A flea collar,” I answered.
Maddie laughed. Storm didn’t find it quite as funny.
“Joking,” I said. “A silver bullet, of course. Anyone who’s seen a werewolf movie knows that.”
“Correct.” Storm riffled through the weapons, brushing his fingers against their gleaming steel. They were lined up left to right by size, from the small pistols you could hold in your shirt pocket like a pack of cigarettes to the large hand cannons so heavy if you wore them on your hip they’d pull your pants down around your ankles, all the way to the bomb-balls Storm made especially for supernatural wars. Those were essentially grenades. Zack looked at one now.
“Uh-uh,” Storm said, shaking his head. “Authorized personnel only, my friend.”
“One day,” Zack said. He stared at the bomb-balls like they were his lost love.
Now Storm pulled one of the big guns off of the rack. It was so polished he could see his wrinkled reflection in it. “But you need something to fire that there silver bullet.”
He handed me the weapon, butt first. My arms strained against its weight. Then he plucked two more from the rack and spun them on his fingers, looking like a gunslinger. He handed these to Maddie and Zack. Of course Zack tried his hand at spinning it and dropped the gun on the floor with an ear-splitting clatter.
“Oops, sorry!” he said, quickly picking it up.
“Good thing it wasn’t loaded,” I said, otherwise, another chunk of my butt may have gone missing.
Maddie, laughing, said, “Okay, we gotta lay off Zack. He’s starting to get angry. We won’t like him when he’s angry. He turns into The Incredibly Pink Hulk.”
Zack gave us the middle finger. I slapped him on the back and made sure he knew we were kidding—at least slightly.
Then Storm, who had been watching this with parental patience, took a box of bullets from the bottom of the rack. He opened the box and rows of large caliber silver bullets winked the overhead lights in our direction. It was like looking at a diamond in the sun.
He flipped the cylinder out and loaded six rounds into the empty chambers. Spinning it with a muted click-click-click, he then snapped it closed.
We all tried to emulate his coolness. It didn’t go as well. Silver bullets bounced off the tiled floor as if we’d just spilled a bag of marbles.
“You’ll get there, friends,” Storm said. “Now what wolf you after tonight?”
I answered. “Buddy Wolverton. He escaped from Northington Springs.”
“I’d heard. You three think you’re up for it?”
We were all quiet for a moment, our eyes darting back and forth. Now, in this instance, confidence was important. So was a good attitude. But this was Buddy Wolverton we were talking about. I’d seen what he’d done to those guards, the whole front corridor of Northington Springs looked like a butcher’s shop with blood and guts painting the walls, reminding me of the many slasher flicks I’d seen.
Hands down, Buddy Wolverton was, so far, the most dangerous target any of us had ever gone up against. So confidence and a strong mental attitude were pretty far from my mind.
We were probably going to have our guts scooped out of us by one of his giant claws. I didn’t say this, though.
Instead, I answered. “No. Not really.”
“Yeah. Sounds about right,” Zack said.
Maddie shrugged. “I hate to say I agree.”
Storm shook his head. “No, no, no! Not with one of my weapons.” He looked at the hand cannon like a man in love. “I made these special. They’ll stand up to the likes of Buddy Wolverton, no problem.” He paused. The armory was quiet for a long moment. “Just don’t get too close to the bastard. It’s a full moon tonight, you know.”
I nodded. A full moon gave a lycan its strength—as if it needed more strength. Least it could do was give it to me. The most I’d ever bench pressed was the barbell, no weights. Just saying.
“Y’all don’t need to worry,” Storm continued, still looking at his weapon.
“A full moon,” Maddie said, shaking her head. “Just what Buddy Wolverton needs.”
Then Storm looked up. The confident manner about his face faded. He raised a finger as if to say one moment, and went behind the desk he’d been sitting at when we’d arrived with Octavius. From a drawer, he pulled out a plastic tub. When he set it on the desk it made a heavy thud. He popped the lid off. “Better yet,” he said, “you should probably be wearing these tonight.”
They looked like bullet proof vests. He threw one toward me and I snagged it out of the air, but it was so heavy it nearly tore my arm from its socket. Same went for Zack. Maddie was smart enough to step out of the way and let the vest clatter in front of her feet. I thought for a second the thing might’ve taken a chunk out of the tile. It hadn’t.
“Those’ll stop a bullet, no problem,” Storm said.
“What about werewolves?” Maddie asked.
“Well, we’ll discuss that when and if you all come back in one piece,” Storm answered and instantly looked like he regretted saying it.
Great. Really great.
Locked and loaded, we headed out.
In the night sky, the moon was fat. Somewhere in my head I heard the deep howling of a werewolf.
Maddie was in the front seat again and me in the back. She riffled through the file, making squeamish noises as she passed the photos of Buddy’s victims. Buddy didn’t seem like he’d be a good buddy at all.
“Where to, milady?” Zack asked. He had his sunglasses off, polishing them on his shirt.
“Don’t call me that,” Maddie answered. “But it’s at a church in Woodhaven.” She punched in an address on the GPS.
Zack drove us out of the parking garage and onto the road.
I was watching Maddie run her finger along Octavius’s scribbling when one of the little goblins crawled out from beneath Zack’s seat.
The creature looked up at me and grinned with his razor sharp teeth.
“What is it?” Zack asked.
“A goblin,” I said. It wasn’t one we’d seen earlier. “Whatcha doing in here, buddy?”
It made a series of clicks and grunts that signified its language. I literally had no idea what it was saying. So I did what anyone would do in this situation: I nodded, acting interested, and said, “Yeah, yeah… But I really think you should be getting back, little guy.” I didn’t know if it was a guy or not. You can’t tell, but the thing didn’t take offense so I figured that was pretty okay then.
“What the frick is one of those things doing in my car?” Zack said. “Throw him out, Abe! Throw him out now!”
Maddie leaned over and pinched Zack’s ear.
I thanked her.
I definitely wasn’t going to throw the little fella out. I was only mean to monsters if they break, what we called at BEAST, “Monster Law” and this guy hadn’t.
The goblin turned its head at the mention of going back. Its too-big eyes grew watery, its thin bottom lip quivered.
My own heart cracked looking at it because it had one of those so-ugly-its-cute kind of things going for it.
“Aww,” Maddie said, cupping her hands over her chest.
“Get him out!” Zack demanded again.
I looked back at the goblin. “You don’t wanna go, do ya?”
The quivering lip stopped only for the creature to speak in those same tones and clicks and groans I didn’t understand. But it shook its head, and I understood that. Then it started mimicking what I thought of as punching and kicking. It put a chubby finger on its chest, looked down, and then flicked its own nose, dramatically throwing its head back. Maddie and I looked at this display with furrowed brows.
Then it hit me. This little guy (if it was a guy) was telling me it didn’t want to go back because it got picked on. Goblins had a penchant for bullying their own. This one was smaller than the others, its features not as harsh, and it seemed to genuinely like humans, at least a little. To them, he was an easy target.
“You don’t wanna go back because they pick on you?” I asked.
The goblin nodded eagerly.
“I swear to God if that thing has an accident in my ride, Abe, first I’m kicking your ass then I’m making you clean it up,” Zack said. His hands were gripped tightly on the wheel as he stared straight ahead, the city passing us by in a blur.
“Relax, Z,” I said. “If this little guy took a dump in your PT Cruiser, he’d only be doing you a favor.”
Maddie laughed, but I heard Zack growling low in his throat. That reminded me we had a werewolf to catch.
Time was ticking and the longer we lollygagged, the greater the chances of civilian casualties.
Which was obviously not good.
“I say we let the little guy stay,” I said. “I know what it was like to get bullied. It sucks balls.”
“You? You know what it’s like to get bullied?” Zack said. “Bull.”
I shrugged. “High school wasn’t easy, man. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not Brad Pitt.”
“Me, either,” Zack replied. “Yeah…bullying sucks.”
I thought we might’ve been going down a path of the past we didn’t exactly have time to go down.
Was Zack bullied when he was younger? If he wore those sunglasses back then the answer was a solid yes. But, I don’t know, I thought Zack was kind of cool. Thinking of him getting bullied was weird.
“How about we vote on it?” Maddie added. “That seems fair.”
Zack turned and lowered his shades, like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. “Oh snap,” he said, “he is kinda cute.” He reached a hand out and the goblin jumped up on the seat and took Zack’s in its own. Zack, as good a driver as he was, never even swerved.
“See?” Maddie said. She pet the wispy hairs on its head. The thing started purring. It was quite a weird experience, all in all.
My life was a string of weird experiences, though, so I really didn’t think much of it.
“Okay, fine. He can stay,” Zack said. The goblin jumped up with joy. It had a lot of spring and clonked its head on the light, crashed to the floor. I reached down and helped it up. It shook like a dog that had just come out of the rain, chittering, which I took as its way of laughing.
Even Zack cracked a smile.
“If he messes up, though, it’s on you, Abe,” Zack said.
Maddie began reading out of the file, telling us why Lucky was in Woodhaven on this full moon’s night.
“He’s been trying to better himself,” she said and looked out of the window, noting the moon in the night sky.
She scanned the words again. How she could read Octavius’s chicken-scratch, I didn’t know.
In Woodhaven, a husband and wife, both afflicted with lycanthropy, ran a sort of bed and breakfast in the basement of a church for werewolves. The place was apparently always packed near a full moon restraining themselves.
I probably could insert an unfunny joke about werewolf packs and the church being packed, but I won’t.
I’m not that lame.
But I was that scared thinking about a basement full of lycans.
The gun loaded with silver bullets was only a minor comfort for the fear I felt.
That was the job, I guess.
7
That Ain’t the Wind Howlin’
Woodhaven, Ohio.
If there was ever a place the zombie apocalypse would start, I’d say it would be this crappy town a few miles outside of Akron. There’s a building on the edge of the city limits called Leering Research Facility. It’s a government-backed place, super shady, and super secretive. Not even BEAST knows what’s going on in there or what kind of crazy stuff they’re up to, and we deal with supernatural monsters.
Oh well. Probably better that we don’t know.
We passed Leering on our way into town. Maddie had the radio going, something by Donna Summer and the little goblin was moving and grooving like his house was on fire.
“Monster Mob?” Maddie said over the music.
Zack and I both shook our heads.
We turned onto 760 and headed to the town square, passing the Woodhaven Motel. A few places had their lights on, the bars and 24/7 gas station, but other than that the place was dark. Spooky.
Through a one lane road, we drove past a cemetery on our right. Crooked headstones in the ground. Wrought iron gates. I kept thinking I’d see a skeletal hand pop up through the dirt at the base of one of those gravestones, but I never did. I didn’t see any tentacles, either. That was good, I supposed.
I pointed up ahead. Over the crest of a hill we could see the jutting spike of a church’s steeple. The place was called Our Lady of Perpetual Tears. I mean, what the hell? What a name for a place of God.
“Eerie,” Maddie said.
She was right. I’d been at this job for over a year and the sight of a dark church on a full moon’s night always brought a score of goosebumps to my flesh, even with the little goblin next to me, still swaying to the music.
“Look,” I said. We hit the top of the hill and in the parking lot, surrounded by trees that were still hanging onto their leaves despite winter being on the horizon, were a score of cars. No lights shined in the church’s windows, either. So something funny was going on within those walls. That I could feel.
“More than I expected…” Zack said. He slowed the Cruiser down and turned its lights off. The road’s darkness swallowed us up.
The goblin made a whining sound. He was scared of the dark. I gave him a comforting pat on the head.
“I’ll park on the street and we’ll walk,” Zack said.
“What’s the plan?” Maddie asked.
“Take a look around. If we see Buddy or Lucky then we’ll go in,” Zack answered.
“I dig it,” I said.
“Dig it?” Maddie a
rched an eyebrow at me. “What, is it the groovy 70s or something?”
“Says the girl who was singing along to Donna Summer,” I replied.
“Hey, Donna Summer is classic!”
I put my hands up in defense. “Not making fun. I dig her, too.”
“Okay, guys, get serious,” Zack said. As if he was one to talk.
He pulled the Cruiser up to the curb, shut the engine off. With the glow of the overhead light, I’d figured we’d be seen.
We weren’t.
“I got it!” Zack said. “The Hellion Rebellion!”
“Hmm,” Maddie said.
I, on the other hand, shook my head. “Sounds like we’re bikers.”
“True,” Maddie echoed.
“Damn it,” Zack said.
I took the gun off my belt and snapped the cylinder open, counted the six silver bullets that gleamed like stars against a black night sky. From the box of rounds, I pocketed six more. I really hoped I wouldn’t have to use that much. Knew I probably would because I’d miss most of the shots I took. Sadly.
As I crawled out of the car, I looked at the goblin. “You stay here,” I said.
It made another whining sound and stuck out its bottom lip.
“Too dangerous, my friend,” I said. “We’ll be right back.”
Or so I’d hoped.
Zack and Maddie stood on the sidewalk, waiting for me.
“C’mon, Abe!” Zack hissed.
I reached in the car and ruffled what was left of the goblin’s hair. It felt the way I’d always thought the spiky hairs on a spider’s legs would feel. But he smiled, and that was good enough for me.
“Right back,” I said. “Stay.”
It settled into the seat.
“So, what, are you gonna keep him now?” Zack asked me.
I laughed. “Maybe.”
“No way,” Zack said. “Octavius would never have it.”
“Or…you know, we could just give him back to BEAST,” Maddie chimed in.
“No,” I shook my head, “he doesn’t like it there. Poor fella.”
“You’re a Poptart, man,” Zack said. “I don’t get it. How can you be a Crowley and be so soft on the inside?”
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