The Black Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  The almost total absence of sound was odd. There were no night birds singing and no crickets or other bugs doing their thing. Rafe’s thundering pulse took up the slack.

  “Either you crawl back to where you came from, or you come out to face me. What other choices are there?” he said with a firm grip on the gun he held behind his back.

  Sudden rustling sounds behind him made Rafe turn. More came from his right, but he stood his ground.

  “You know you can’t have her. Think of me as the gatekeeper on that score.”

  Adrenaline turned his skin icy. Sensing these creeps without being able to see them made his stomach clench. Hell, were there vampires out here, or something even worse? What did demons look like, and how fast did they move? He had a nagging suspicion that he was about to find out.

  Something slid past him, momentarily blurring the light from the headlights as it headed into the pool of blackness beyond the car. Rafe had no idea what it was. The thing had moved like a streak of misplaced air rather than anything hampered by a solid form.

  He turned in a slow circle, watching, searching, waiting, for the next surprise. Each passing second put his practiced cop nerves to the test. “Everyone here has to behave,” he muttered to break up the silence and calm his nerves.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rafe caught sight of another blur of movement and brought the gun forward with his finger on the trigger, ready to do some damage if it came to that.

  “Show yourself,” he said at a reasonable volume, figuring anything that could move so quickly might also have exceptional hearing.

  More rustling came from his left. Then behind him. And again to his right. All signs pointed to his being surrounded, and he had how many silver rounds loaded in the damn gun?

  Nerves buzzed like loose live wires. Rafe settled his shoulders and widened his stance. He took a deep breath. There was an annoying twitch beneath his left eye. But his hand was steady on the weapon that wasn’t aimed at anything...because as of yet there was nothing to see.

  He backed up to press himself against the warm metal of the car’s side panel. If anything came from behind, it would have to leap over the car and he’d have time to address the threat. His cell phone was in his pocket. He should have made a call before heading in this direction, so his mother could summon backup and return. At least, since he hadn’t gone far into the grove on the property, there was a chance that the small staff working underground at Fairview Hospital might have heard the engines and come out for a look.

  As if that last thought had kicked up a disturbance in the atmosphere, a solitary form suddenly appeared in front of him. He hadn’t even seen anything move, but this sucker was a familiar sight—gaunt, ghostly, white haired, white-faced and all fanged up. Though it might have been human once, it definitely didn’t fit into that species anymore.

  This was the vamp they had met in the park, the leader of a nest. The decrepit, odorous bloodsucker didn’t seem to care about the gun Rafe aimed at its bony chest. After all, it had died once or twice before.

  “Glad you decided to show up,” Rafe remarked, alarmed by the sight in front of him but still steady enough to deal with this creature. “Too bad there’s nothing here for you presently. Surely you’ve sensed that.”

  The bloodsucker returned in a mocking tone, “She will come. Surely you have sensed that.”

  The worst part was the ring of truth in the vamp’s response. Cara might return when she discovered that he hadn’t followed her. She could be on her way now if his mother also realized the potential of the danger he faced.

  “She will never give you what you want,” Rafe said. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I have plenty of time to spare. On the other hand, you do not share that luxury,” the creature remarked.

  “Luxury? Look at you. Time has not treated you well.”

  “Spoken by a werewolf with a limited life span,” the vampire countered.

  “At least I don’t live off the life force of others. I don’t troll the human race for my food supply.”

  “And yet I would not trade places with an animal that was never human to begin with.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t think anyone would have offered you that choice,” Rafe said. “And as a side note, Cara still isn’t here.”

  The old vampire smiled, showing off a pair of chipped, yellowed fangs. Flat black eyes looked beyond Rafe in a way that made Rafe afraid to follow its gaze. He wasn’t sure if the sucker had truly seen something or if this was part of an old ruse designed to shift Rafe’s attention elsewhere, leaving him vulnerable to those fangs.

  He had not heard a car arrive. He didn’t sense Cara’s return to the area when there was no way he could have missed her. Part of her soul now belonged to him, and he would fight every vampire on the earth if he had to in order to keep it.

  Finally, the old creep moved, breaking the standoff with a sideways glide. Rafe adjusted his stance, determined to keep this monster in his sight, and realized shortly afterward that the vampire had detected something else. Not Cara or a car. The rustling noises he had heard earlier were back and seemed to come from everywhere. The strange thing about it was the fact that the vampire across from him appeared to be as wary of the sounds as he was.

  This meant he and the vampires weren’t alone, and it was possible the two of them weren’t going to be the only species represented here.

  * * *

  The car wasn’t going fast enough for Cara. But the old Fairview sign finally appeared in the headlight beams and the SUV skidded into a tight right turn.

  “Wait,” she again messaged to Rafe. “Almost there.”

  When no reply came, Cara sent her senses out to find him. What she located out there turned her skin cold. Chills engulfed her as Dana took another sharp right turn and the outline of the hospital loomed in the distance. Dana had no further questions now. She too was intent on finding Rafe.

  Cara was out of the car before it came to a complete stop and sprinted for the trees. Behind her, Dana swore out loud and gave chase. This was a déjà vu moment for Rafe’s mother, who had been here back then, when Rosalind was the central focus and monsters flocked to her like lemmings. Dana Delmonico Landau had seen what haunted these woods and was up for round two, bless her.

  The distance from Fairview’s chain-link fence to the trees was nominal. Cara covered it fast. She didn’t stop to listen to the troubling sounds or to pay heed to the creatures that had gathered in such a doomed spot. Rafe was all she cared about. Now was the only thing that mattered. That, and the sound of Dana breathing hard behind her.

  The vampires that had taken up residence here tonight didn’t stop her. Passing the contorted faces of the demons that had come to party with her soul was a breeze. She slowed only after reaching the car Rafe had been driving. The engine was silent, but the headlights were on and the driver’s side door had been left open.

  The only thing missing from this scene was Rafe.

  Cara urged Dana to be silent with a raised hand. “Rafe?” she messaged to him and then waited out an adrenaline rush more intense than the one that had gotten her this far.

  Had that cagey old vampire found him? The scent of the creature tainted the air and brought bile to her throat. But that wasn’t it, Cara suddenly understood.

  “Demons,” she hissed, as if uttering that word was an act of blasphemy. “We meet again.”

  Beside her, Dana said, “Shit.”

  And then the area became quiet again.

  The next sound Cara heard was the voice of a vampire she had already met. She had been right in assuming the old bloodsucker would show up.

  “I told him you would come,” the pale-faced sucker said, appearing in the shadows the car’s headlights didn’t reach.

  Ignoring the vamp, Cara closed her eyes to concentrate harder on Rafe. There were other
s here, her senses warned. The darkness was filled with a presence that even this ancient vampire would fear.

  Vampires walked the earth hoping never to taste the tarnished fruits of the hell they would eventually descend to when their final death came. This was possibly the reason the old vampire desired to claim the dark spirit for himself...so that he could cheat death and continue endlessly on.

  Demons were what everyone feared. So, how many of them had come to this place? It was curious how quickly they had located her. And it was a no-brainer that she would have returned to fight beside her lover.

  Cara turned in a slow circle to place the positions of the hell spawn in their surroundings before opening her eyes. “Ten demons,” she said to enlighten Dana, adding, “Not much of a party at all, really.”

  To the vampire, Cara said, “Where is he?”

  “Right here,” Rafe said, causing her heart to lurch as he sprinted from the shadows to draw up beside her.

  Cara could have thrown herself into his arms now, the way she had always wanted to, yet she managed to restrain her careening emotions. Rafe was here. He was safe. Whatever happened next would be an anticlimax.

  But...why was he safe with so many monsters around? How had he avoided them?

  “Bait,” he said, reading her thoughts and eyeing her steadily before nodding to his mother. “In order to catch a prize, everyone gets that you have to dangle the bait.”

  “They used him to get us back here,” Dana said, frowning.

  “The plan worked,” Rafe agreed, brushing up against Cara’s shoulder as if he also needed the comfort of a quick touch.

  “You have a gun,” Dana observed. “And bullets that will count. Why haven’t you used it?”

  “There’s something else out here that I haven’t been able to pinpoint. Another presence that has made our enemies as wary as we are.”

  “But now we have you, dark one,” the vampire said without moving toward them. “One of us will be victorious when we shake that spirit from you and eat it alive.”

  Still, the vampires didn’t advance to make good on that threat, and neither did the demons that looked on. So what was going on? Why were these monsters so anxious about doing what they had come here to do?

  Cara spread her arms wide. “All you have to do is come closer, vampire...if you can coax the spirit from me, that is.”

  “Cara,” Rafe warned.

  She went on. “If you kill me in the process of taking what you want, you might kill the Banshee as well. Then where would you be? Demon fodder? Demons don’t discriminate between the living and the dead. Can’t you hear the sound of their jaws chomping?”

  The vampire accepted the taunt by stepping forward. Once the signal had been given, the rest of the bloodsucker’s fanged friends rushed in from beneath the shelter of the trees.

  Chapter 33

  All hell broke loose.

  Next to Cara, Rafe started shooting, picking off vampires by aiming at their pathetic chests, where their hearts used to beat. Four of them exploded before Dana raised the revolver she had stuffed in her belt and joined in. The sound of gunfire was deafening. The clearing filled with sticky gray ash, which prompted several more vamps to come running.

  Given a party like this one, the demons weren’t to be left out. Some of the ten Cara had counted flew forward, leaving their human disguises behind. Cara’s claws sprang into existence like lethal switchblades as Rafe bumped against her. Wielding them like knives, Cara began her dance of death, swinging, slashing, ducking and lunging at each monster that came her way with a fury and a force they hadn’t been expecting.

  More vampires exploded. Clouds of ash rained down. Only one demon burst into flames, having gotten too close to Cara, before the fighting shifted into high gear and the demons shrieked with displeasure over losing one of their own.

  “Each kill weakens them,” Cara shouted. Rafe and Dana were reloading their weapons in turns and fighting with their fists while they did. There was motion everywhere. Falling ash hampered sight.

  So far, she, Rafe and Dana were holding their own. The Banshee hadn’t wailed for them, so death wasn’t imminent, though deep in her gut, Cara had a bad feeling about the outcome of this monstrous barrage. There was another presence out there, Rafe had warned, and she had known this from the start, but besides vampires and demons, what did that leave? Right then, she had no further sense of what sort of visitor could be out there, and there were too many monsters as it was.

  Cara had never seen so many bloodsuckers in one place, except in her mother’s show-and-tell of shared memory less than an hour ago. These vampires and demons hadn’t attacked each other here, which would have been the norm. They seemed to have banded together, with the possible acquisition of a dark spirit as their common goal, though no love was lost between denizens of the darker species.

  Cara’s fangs appeared soon after the fourth vampire came at her. Black blood covered her cheeks when she used those fangs to tear at the hands reaching for her throat. She moved through the attackers in a whirlwind of fury. Attracted to this kind of power, the dark spirit she held back soared upward with an icy chill.

  No. Not now. Not yet, Cara cautioned. She couldn’t afford to lose her concentration. If she did, all would be lost.

  The clearing crawled with supernatural attackers. Rafe now mainly used his fists, his fighting fueled by raw, wolf-backed strength. Next to her, Dana, showing no visible sign of fear, had become a fighting machine. And yet even the strongest werewolves didn’t come equipped with an endless supply of energy, and their stamina would eventually wane. When it did, the remaining demons would approach, sensing that weakness.

  For the first time in her life, Cara began to lose hope. She fought harder, growled with each strike, grunted as she dodged oncoming blows. Her goal was to protect her lover and the spirit that everyone wanted a piece of. She could not have Rafe harmed, especially now that she loved him. She couldn’t let her family down.

  Those thoughts had barely taken wing when a bolt of white lightning crashed through the crowd, tearing through vampires and demons like a guided missile bent on destruction. It wasn’t actually lightning, though, but something made of flesh and bone that moved with the force of a terrible storm.

  She had no time to find out what this new interruption was. Slowing down meant defeat. Yet the white streak seemed to be taking out monsters as if it was on her side.

  When a high-pitched howl echoed through the clearing, Cara’s ears rang with internal warnings. Her stomach turned over. But the howl had a strange effect on everyone in the battle.

  Fighting slowed, as if the harrowing sound had contained a command. The vampire Cara held on to paused, shuddered and tried to backpedal. Rafe’s demonic attacker lost focus and turned toward the trees. Dana lowered her gun.

  Confused, anxious, wary and with their hearts in their throats, Cara and her companions also turned toward the echo, because every wolf on the earth recognized what such a sound meant. It was the song of triumph and of impending victory when the Weres here were still outnumbered and things didn’t look good. And it had mesmerized everyone except Cara, who had heard that same sound once before in a dream sequence of her mother’s memories about what had happened to Colton Killion in the park.

  The aftermath of the sound was an uncomfortable silence that was dense and disquieting.

  * * *

  Rafe couldn’t decide where to focus his attention. The echo of that howl went on and on, even though there were no walls out here for it to bounce off. The sound stirred his insides with hints of a forgotten past that no werewolf now knew. Images of mountains and valleys of trees flashed through his mind, there and gone so quickly he wondered if he had made them up.

  All of a sudden, he felt connected to a larger picture that he could only manage to see the smallest part of, and the sensation lifted the fine hairs
on the back of his neck. He wasn’t the only one affected by the suddenness of new sensations. Every beast in the clearing had frozen in place as if they had been on the receiving end of a stun gun.

  Cara looked to be as shocked as he was. His mother was holding her breath. As for whatever had moved through them like a lightning strike in the seconds preceding that howl...intuition warned that this also needed closer scrutiny. However, Rafe didn’t turn to glance in that direction, already certain that whatever the flash was, it meant the three of them no harm. The curtain of ash that continued to fall told him so.

  He was covered in the foul-smelling stuff. His arms burned with demon fire. The attention of the vastly reduced forces of their attackers had been lured away from Rafe’s little threesome by whatever they had deemed to be a greater threat. Fear and excitement ruffled through their ranks. Fangs were again gnashing.

  But none of them moved.

  The echo of the howl they all had heard was finally broken by another more earthly sound. Cars on the driveway. Engines revved. Doors slammed. Voices called out. Rafe would have said that his pack had arrived in the nick of time if someone hadn’t already hit the pause button that had extended to him, Cara and his mother a short respite in which to recoup their strength.

  He looked to Cara to make sure she was all right. Her eyes were bright with excitement. Her face was tilted upward as she listened to what was going on. Did she anticipate another kind of arrival? Something he hadn’t yet perceived? He had felt another presence out there in the dark, but hell, had that presence announced itself in a way that others here had recognized?

  The thunder of running feet was uncommonly loud in the silence that had fallen. His father would come armed with weapons and packmates, ready to rumble. And yet even as the pack entered the clearing to shift the odds of victory in Were favor, the monsters made no attempt to face them. The arrival of reinforcements didn’t seem to matter to these monsters at the moment. In spite of that strange fact, Rafe breathed a sigh of relief when his father stood beside him.