The Wereling 1: Wounded

by Stephen Cole

  ‘Who cares?’ Blood shrugged. ‘You’re missing the point. Something big’s happening – and Takapa will be there. And so will I. I’ve offered to give Lydia a lift to the gathering. If Takapa has taken Kate prisoner, and let’s face it, it’s likely – ’

  Tom felt a shiver run down his spine. ‘You think she could be there too?’

  ‘There’s a chance. And if not, some of my friends can follow Takapa back to the stone he crawled out from under, and see who else is there. I’m just mailing them now.’ Blood grinned, showing impeccable white teeth. ‘Hooray for me.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t a hero?’ Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘Eavesdropping on a secret gathering of all the lupines in Louisiana might be just a bit dangerous, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s right, Tom, you look on the bright side,’ grumbled Blood. ‘I’m still reeling from the sheer genius of my plan, OK? I’ll worry about the implications later.’

  A tinny chime sounded from his laptop.

  ‘You have mail,’ said Tom.

  Blood double-clicked beneath the track-pad and then stared at his screen like it had just slapped him in the face. ‘Hell’s buttocks, they’ve actually done it.’ He frowned. ‘But I thought Blake was away?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Jicaque.’ Blood’s brilliant blue eyes drilled into Tom’s. ‘My lads have probably put their lives on the line, but they’ve found Jicaque!’

  Tom looked at him, slack-jawed. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  He shook his head. ‘My pal Blake has come up with an address on Chartres Street. Makes sense for a medicine man, it’s close to the Historic Pharmacy Museum— ’

  ‘Never mind the estate agent spiel,’ Tom said, his heart racing with the prospect of a cure. A warning voice told him not to raise his hopes, but they were already straining for the sky. ‘What do we do? What the hell do we do? They’re watching us, we can’t just pop out and visit him, can we? And what about Kate, I mean—’

  ‘The first thing you do is calm down.’ Blood checked his watch. ‘There are four hours till noon, and it’s better I’m not seen with you when I go to pick up Lydia.’

  ‘But if you’re going to find Kate I should be there!’ Tom protested.

  Blood shook his head. ‘We have to tread carefully,’ he said, ‘or we could put her in more danger. So, why don’t you slip out and make contact with Jicaque?’

  He tugged some printer paper from beneath some scattered phone directories and found a fountain pen. ‘Probably safest to take the St Charles streetcar from the stop around the corner,’ he said, scrawling out a map in peacock blue ink. ‘It’s not quick, but it’s very public. Get off at Canal Street, and run the rest of the way.’ He handed Tom ten bucks, and started searching again among the debris on the floor. ‘Now, you’ll need some shoes, of course. What size are you?’

  ‘Ten,’ said Tom vacantly, gazing at the scribbled map like it was a hundred dollar bill.

  ‘I’m a ten too, but a UK ten, and that’s an American eleven.’ He frowned as he hauled out some white basketball shoes from beneath a broken bookshelf. ‘So, these will be one size too big, but then, I’m not a gentlemen’s outfitters.’ He chucked the shoes at Tom. ‘Sorted. Well, what are you waiting for? Get out of here!’

  Tom slipped on one of the shoes, but recoiled suddenly from the other. ‘What’s that smell?’ He upturned the boot and something fell out. It looked like a mummified chilli, stuffed with pungent herbs and spices and tied with a ribbon.

  ‘Oh, just gris-gris,’ Blood explained a little shiftily. ‘A voodoo charm someone gave me.’

  ‘Voodoo?’ Tom wrinkled his nose. ‘Smells more like dog-do.’

  ‘Take it with you,’ Blood suggested. ‘Christ knows, we’ll need all the luck we can get. The ’wolves want Jicaque to stay hidden, remember? They could be watching.’

  Tom wriggled his foot into the other shoe. ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘And don’t forget, Tom, even if you can persuade Jicaque to help … ’ Blood sighed. ‘This cure, whatever it is, chances are it won’t be quick or pleasant. So make contact, suss out the lay of the land, and get yourself back here. I’ll call to let you know what’s happening. Now come on, let’s go and make a scene outside for anyone watching.’

  ‘OK.’ Tom nodded, hesitated in the doorway. ‘Uh, Adam … ’

  ‘Thanks?’ Blood shook his head. ‘Thank me when all this is over and done with. OK?’

  Kate wished she had some way of telling the time. She felt like she’d been cooped up here all night, and knew she daren’t wait much longer. She had to act.

  Patience had been brought a plate of food and allowed a bathroom break, but no guard had come to relieve her, and it seemed the old woman didn’t dare kick up any kind of fuss about being left to slowly refrigerate.

  ‘You know the code to open the door,’ Kate had taunted her. ‘Why don’t you just roll away? I’m sick of the sight of you.’

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ was Patience’s gloomy response. Maybe she was starting to realise she was as much of a prisoner in Takapa’s lair as Kate was, for all her gloating.

  So, more brooding than angry now, Patience had drifted for hours between sullen, sleepy silence and bouts of rattling snores. The sound punctuated Kate’s own fitful sleep like machine-gun fire.

  At last, the battered old woman opened her crinkled brown eyes. She snorted as she took in her surroundings, and glared at Kate. ‘Just you wait, girl,’ she muttered, voice husky with sleep. Automatically, she unscrewed the thermos and poured herself a further cup of thick, treacly coffee.

  Kate kept her face quietly neutral. Then she looked at the door, and allowed her expression to change to fleeting surprise.

  Patience noticed, and turned swiftly to look for herself.

  Kate darted out her hand, held it hovering over the plastic cup on the desk.

  Patience turned, and saw her.

  Kate let her eyes widen with alarm, and started to snatch back her hand.

  But Patience lunged and grabbed hold of her powdery fingers. ‘What’s this?’ she growled.

  ‘Nothing.’ Kate yanked her hand clear.

  Patience swore and wheeled herself round the desk. ‘You tried to put something in my coffee!’

  ‘What do you mean, tried?’ Kate smirked, with a conspicuous glance down at the skull ring. ‘Every time you fell asleep I dropped in some more. And every time you woke up you chugged it right down.’

  Patience narrowed her eyes.

  Kate displayed the skull ring a little more prominently, hoping the old woman would cotton on.

  Finally, she did. ‘Let me see that.’

  ‘No,’ Kate protested like she meant it, but the old woman wrenched the ring from her finger.

  Patience soon figured out the hinged skull-lid, even with her injured hand. She dipped her finger in the chalky remains of pill hidden inside. ‘What have you done to me?’ she hissed.

  ‘You want to know?’ Kate rattled her leg. ‘Undo this chain.’

  ‘No way, Miss.’

  ‘Then I guess you’ll just have to find out the hard way.’

  Patience narrowed her eyes. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘All right.’ Kate shrugged, prepared herself for a measure of 9.1 on the bullshit scale. ‘It’s poison powder. Suicide-to-go, from a backroom druggist in Salt Lake. They were meant for Tom and me if we got caught, if there was no other way out.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But you’ve been such a bitch I thought I’d save it for you.’

  Patience brushed the white powder from her thick fingers like it was burning her.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long now,’ Kate went on. ‘Can you feel the poison inside you? Soaking into your thin old blood, piling up in your veins – ’

  Patience raised her fist.

  ‘Takapa told you I wasn’t to come to harm,’ Kate yelled, ‘Just you dare touch me one more time – I’ll never tell you the antidote.’

  The old woman hesitated.
‘Antidote?’

  ‘Sure. It’s easy to counteract the chemicals if you know what they are.’ Kate gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m plenty smart, remember? Too much schooling, you said so yourself.’

  ‘Papa Takapa will make you tell me.’

  Kate slowly shook her head. ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, no matter,’ said Patience, her arthritic hand tight on her stomach. ‘Papa Takapa knows science as well as magic. He can fix me right back up.’

  ‘Even if you were worth his trouble,’ Kate sneered, ‘you’ll be dead inside an hour unless you listen to me.’

  Patience seemed paralysed with fear and indecision. Kate could almost hear the paranoid thoughts running through her mind, as all the little fears about her own worth kicked violently into play.

  Finally, she slumped back in her wheelchair and stared at Kate. Her eyes welled up, her nose started to run, she massaged her gut like she was getting cramps. ‘Tell me the cure. I don’t want to die. Tell me.’

  Got you. Kate felt no sense of triumph at tricking this scared, pitiful woman, and she was a long way from being safely out of here. But as she held her hand out for the key to her chains, a few dead embers of hope deep inside her flared into fire.

  Patience quickly handed her the key. ‘But remember,’ she said through noisy sniffles. ‘Only I know the code to this door. If you don’t tell me how to fix myself up, it stays shut.’

  Kate massaged the bruised flesh of her ankle, numbed by the metal shackles. ‘Don’t think so. We need to reach a drugstore, and fast. Get me out of here.’

  ‘They’ll never let you leave!’ squealed Patience.

  Kate just shrugged. ‘Time’s running out for both of us, Patience. But I promise you’ll go before me.’

  Patience angrily punched in the code on the pad. ‘Walk ahead of me. Come on, hurry.’

  Kate’s heart was pounding so hard she thought any guards would be able to hear her coming. But the clean, clinical windowless corridors they moved down were all empty. ‘Where is everyone?’ she whispered cautiously.

  ‘They can’t have cleared out,’ Patience muttered. ‘There was some kind of big gathering going to happen, but they’d have taken me – ’

  ‘You must get it by now,’ said Kate quietly. ‘You don’t matter to them any more. And now that you’ve set me free, there’s no going back for you either.’

  They went on. The whole place remained silent and empty until a turn in the passage revealed a set of fire doors, laxly guarded by two men slumped in chairs. One was a good-looking oriental. The other was ugly and white with long blond hair and a face scored with vivid gashes. With a shock Kate recognised him as the fake porter who’d helped kidnap her back on the train, and who’d been taken away in the ambulance once they’d reached New Orleans.

  ‘Takapa must be low on staff if he has to keep wheeling out his ’wolf wounded for guard duty,’ Kate observed quietly.

  ‘They’re not ’wolves,’ Patience sneered. ‘Just men who want to be. But first they have to prove themselves to Takapa, do whatever he bids them.’

  Kate nodded. ‘It figures that they’re the only ones left here if there’s a big ’wolf gathering going on.’ She leaned over to Patience and hissed in her ear: ‘Just get us past them. Quick.’

  Patience reached up casually to the fire alarm on the wall and slammed her palm into it. A deafening shriek wailed out from a siren somewhere in the ceiling.

  Kate clasped her hands over her ears, stared around in horror.

  ‘Let’s hope this place really is empty,’ Patience shouted at her. With that, she heaved herself forward in her wheelchair and rolled up to the guards.

  Kate peered around the edge of the corridor. The men were looking about uncertainly, confused as to what they should do.

  ‘The storeroom!’ Patience yelled. ‘The girl started a fire there!’ She slapped the oriental guy’s backside. ‘Quick, before all Papa’s work gets roasted!’

  The man started running towards Kate’s hiding place. He would see her in seconds.

  As he turned the corner Kate swung her fist into his face. She shouted out in pain, but the guard went down soundlessly.

  Kate looked down at the knuckle-duster, loose on her slender hands, then at the prone body at her feet. ‘I think it hurt me almost as much as it hurt you,’ she muttered.

  Patience was waiting by the doors, the blond guy sprawled on the floor beside her, clutching his face. Her good hand was wet with his blood.

  ‘I think those cuts of his might still be tender,’ Patience said. She sucked her bloody fingers like popsicles as Kate unbolted the doors.

  Seconds later, they were outside in an alleyway, blinking in the September sunlight. Kate slammed the fire doors shut and wedged a length of wood through the large metal handles, trapping both the men and the noisy alarms inside. Then she felt Patience grab hold of her jacket.

  ‘So?’ The old woman looked up at her.

  ‘So, nothing,’ Kate said coldly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Patience.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Patience croaked, tears spilling down her tired, lined face.

  ‘I never drugged you,’ Kate confessed. ‘Sure, there were pills inside the ring. But I crumbled them into the bucket. It was all just a bluff.’

  For several seconds Patience seemed frozen as a statue, staring into space. Then she nodded slowly, and let go of Kate’s jacket. ‘I guess I already knew. But it was easier to believe I was acting to save myself from filth like you than from my own kind.’

  Kate nodded briefly. She couldn’t sort hate from pity.

  ‘The old ways are changing,’ Patience went on, and she might’ve been any ordinary old lady lamenting the lost years. ‘The community … the ties that bind us … it’s all breaking away.’

  ‘And Papa Takapa wants to build a new community in its place,’ mused Kate.

  ‘On his terms,’ Patience said sourly. ‘Well, I guess we’re both on the run now.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Kate said without much conviction.

  ‘I figure they won’t be so bothered about finding an old wreck like me,’ Patience concluded. Her tone became sly. ‘But you’d better watch your back, little girl. ’Cause your momma’s claws are going to be reaching out for you everywhere you go.’

  Kate turned to leave.

  ‘I’m a survivor!’ Patience yelled after her, rocking in her wheelchair. ‘I’ll be fine! But how about you, huh, Folan-girl? How about you?’

  Kate left Patience gloating in the alleyway. She didn’t look back. She forced herself to stay calm, and walked briskly down to the quiet street at the end of the lane.

  Where was Tom right now? Where was her mother?

  Her brisk walk became a jog, and the jog became a desperate, panicked run into the heedless heart of the city.

  g

  g

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Blood physically threw Tom out on to the street. ‘I’m not getting mixed up in this,’ he yelled. ‘You got yourself into it, get yourself out of it!’ He gave Tom a covert wink then shooed him away. ‘Now, move it!’

  Tom ran away down the leafy avenue in his oversized shoes. He’d memorised the map and soon he could hear the clang and rumble of an approaching streetcar. He looked about carefully as he boarded and sat down on the hard mahogany seat. No one was paying him any attention.

  The streetcar pulled slowly away. A cool breeze blew in through the large windows. Tom could barely sit still. He’d know soon if he had a chance to put this nightmare behind him. Quite literally, to start living again. He pictured himself bursting through the back door of his home, and the looks on his parents’ faces as they realised he was alive and well. Grabbing his brother in one of the old hug-wrestles they used to give each other.

  But what about Kate? Even if Blood could rescue Kate from her captors, Marcie would still want revenge on her and Tom. And if Tom lost his lupine strength, how would he protect them both?

  Tom shook his head. You have
to do this, he told himself. Whatever it costs, you have to.

  Outside, people were heading off to work, shopkeepers swept the pavement outside their stores, kids with heavy backpacks were walking to school. The view seemed oddly out of place with the old-fashioned wood-and-brass styling of the streetcar. It trundled by agonisingly slowly. Be patient, Tom told himself.

  He was still telling himself, over and over, as he finally pushed his way off the crowded streetcar at Canal Street and ran full-pelt towards his destination.

  Once he’d found the pharmacy museum, Tom looked quickly around, panting for lost breath. He soon located the address Blood had given him. A health food store nestled in a colourful parade a few doors down.

  Tom paused. What if this was another trap? Could Blood have set him up?

  ‘Where y’at?’

  The voice made Tom jump. He remembered the creepy old man hiding out at the back of the dilapidated cinema. But the accent was different, the voice younger.

  ‘You look like a young man who waits with purpose.’ The speaker was Native American, a man pushing fifty, with greying hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a brightly-coloured coat, with simple, faded garments beneath.

  ‘Jicaque?’ Tom murmured.

  The Native American reacted, gave Tom a look he couldn’t fathom.

  ‘My name is Tulung,’ he said at last. ‘Please, will you come?’

  Tom cautiously followed the man down a narrow alley to the back of the building, and up a fire escape to the second floor.

  ‘Whispered questions have been asked all around the city,’ Tulung told him. ‘Jicaque has known that one would come looking for him.’

  ‘Will he see me?’ Tom asked quickly. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘It is dangerous. For you both.’ Tulung stopped and looked over his shoulder at Tom. ‘But I sense courage in you, and know it to be in Jicaque.’

  He led Tom into a small kitchen that smelled strongly of spices. Beyond was a large, chilly room that had to be Jicaque’s workspace. Weird abstract paintings lined the terracotta walls, hanging over benches piled high with mystical-looking clutter, bubbling beakers, everything a practising medicine man might need, save for a full-on cauldron. A blue door bisected the wall to Tom’s left, charms and chains and ribbons hanging from a hundred hooks in the old wood. In the centre of the room was a large, square red mat decorated with swirling golden symbols. At each corner rose a towering abstract sculpture, twisted and strange. The morning sunlight caught on their heavy bronze bodies through two tall open windows, around which gauzy curtains fluttered.