He gasped, suddenly sure one of them had snuck up behind them. He whirled, Lane Cartwright’s Smith & Wesson pointed at—
—nothing.
Duane exhaled raggedly. He’d damn near fired the gun. And then where would they have been? The noise would have drawn the werewolf right to them. Duane turned toward Savannah, and the cottage window above him exploded in a hail of glass. The huge black shape came down between Barb and Savannah, and though Barb was quick—the shotgun barrels were rising even as the black werewolf landed—the beast was quicker. It knocked the shotgun aside, both barrels detonating into the sky, and swept down at Barb with its other hand. Barb’s throat was latticed with deep slits, and as the blood began to pour from the slits in bright red rills, the beast lunged forward and fastened its enormous jaws over Barb’s face. Something large and shiny tumbled from beneath Barb’s shirt—the machete. Even in the act of dying, Barb fought valiantly. She gripped the creature in a bear hug and tumbled backward, a movement Duane was certain was meant to give them time to escape.
Unthinkingly, he snatched up the machete and followed Savannah, who was a step ahead of him, was leading him away from the horrible snarling and squelching noises.
There were, he saw as he pelted down the sidewalk, dozens of corpses littering the grass. How many people could one werewolf eat? Or was it the bloodletting they enjoyed?
Duane and Savannah sprinted side by side, were nearing the turnstiles. Only twenty more yards and they’d be out.
A shape bounded toward them, and Duane knew it was the black werewolf even before it leaped onto the sidewalk before them and skidded in the congealing lake of blood. Duane pushed Savannah behind him and raised the Smith & Wesson. As he aimed he got a good look at the black werewolf, distinguished in its animalistic features the sultry raven-haired goddess from the Roof.
Duane squeezed the trigger. At the same instant, the werewolf struck at the gun. Duane felt a tug, thought he’d nailed the monster dead in the face, but then he beheld the look of triumph, the maw open in a leer, and realized the werewolf had moved too swiftly for him, the shot gone astray. Pain flooded his hand. He glanced down and saw that his trigger finger had been broken so utterly that it pointed sideways.
An explosion at his right ear made him cry out, land prostrate at the beast’s feet. But the beast was backpedaling, he saw, getting tangled up, landing against a turnstile. It was grasping the meat joining its neck and shoulder, a spurt of blood jetting between its fingers. Duane looked up and saw Savannah striding forward, gun outstretched. She fired again and the werewolf jolted, the slug popping the creature in the chest. Savannah stopped ten feet from the beast and took aim.
Spun around as a howl split the night.
Duane felt his stomach plummet.
The blond beast was barreling toward them, head low, moving like the world’s hairiest freight train. If it hadn’t been so bone-chilling, it would have been beautiful.
Savannah cried out. Duane glanced back and realized the black werewolf had kicked Savannah’s legs out from under her. Duane lurched toward Savannah, grabbed her wrists and jerked her away from the black werewolf just before it pounced. Then they were backing into the grass, throwing glances at the black werewolf, which was rising to its feet, and at the blond werewolf, which had slowed, apparently no longer fearful of their escape.
Duane shot glances right and left, gnashed his teeth at sight of the ludicrously tall security fence, and dammit, was that really necessary? This was an amusement park, not the fucking Kremlin. Was the epidemic of kids sneaking into the arcade so severe that Beach Land needed to take such extreme measures to keep them out?
Duane took Savannah’s hand, felt something bump his ankle. He glanced down, saw he’d gotten his foot wedged under a mutilated leg. He was getting his balance again when he glimpsed something dark and shiny between the severed leg and what looked like a pile of intestines.
Lane Cartwright’s gun.
With a surge of relief, he snatched it off the ground, then yelped when his broken index finger protested. Grimacing, he switched the gun to his left hand and felt what little excitement he’d experienced ebb. He’d never been ambidextrous, couldn’t even hold a spoon comfortably in his left hand. How the hell could he operate a gun with it?
The blond wolf closed in, but instead of attacking on their flank as he assumed it would, the blond beast chose to join the black wolf on the sidewalk.
Both of them blocking the exit.
“Duane,” Savannah said.
He couldn’t respond. Could only stare at the huge beasts as they began to step toward them.
But Savannah was tugging on his arm. “Look,” she demanded.
He turned, followed her gaze, and saw, through the grating of the tall fence, a shape bounding down the hill and entering the parking lot.
“It’s another one,” Savannah said in thin voice.
He nodded, but he didn’t speak. Because as crazy as it sounded, there was something familiar about the figure. Duane leaned forward, squinted.
“It looks angry,” Savannah whispered. He glanced at her, then at the werewolves, which had also taken note of the new arrival.
Savannah seized his arm. “Run,” she said.
They ran.
Melody neared the front gate.
These were the ones, she knew. The wolves watching her from the other side of the fence were two of the creatures she’d seen in her dreams. Where the third one was she didn’t know, but she knew with an unshakable certitude that the unseen wolf would be red, because these two were yellow and black.
It was the yellow one Melody wanted to kill most. It was the yellow one who had started all this.
The first werewolf.
So when the yellow wolf wheeled around and set off after Savannah and Short Pump, Melody growled deep in her glorious throat. She knew it would be better for her to face one wolf rather than two, but still she lusted for the gush of the yellow wolf’s blood, longed to make the queen wolf pay for all she had started, for the horror she had brought to Lakeview.
Melody slowed as she neared the turnstiles.
On a level she didn’t care to examine, Melody understood how it had been. The yellow one had been the first; the black and red were her sisters. The yellow one had dabbled in the unholy arts, had eaten of the dead wolf flesh and had become bestial. The yellow one had converted her sisters, and the Three had been born. The Three had lived for centuries. Perhaps millennia. They craved new adventures, new conquests.
New victims.
And when one of their unholy progeny had spilled blood at the bonfire and had made new wolves, the Three had arrived to control the population, to ensure their kind didn’t multiply.
They’d come here to kill.
To kill Glenn.
To kill Joyce.
To kill Weezer, which wouldn’t be such a loss.
But they’d come to kill Melody too.
She reached the turnstile and leaped over it just as the yellow wolf disappeared between a pair of cottages. The black wolf hadn’t moved, was perhaps curious about Melody owing to the scarcity of werewolves in the world.
How many were there?
Not many, she was sure. The queen wouldn’t want competition, wouldn’t want to threaten her supremacy, her total control.
The black wolf eyed her from the grass.
Grass that was littered with entrails.
Melody thought of Father Bridwell, of her brothers. She recalled their screams, their sobs, their anguished pleas.
In a way, it was all due to the Three, the beasts who had started this.
That wasn’t true, she realized, pulling up short. On all fours, she gazed up at the black wolf, discerned a great many emotions in the bestial features. But whatever this creature was, however abhorrent the black wolf and her two companions were, they were
not responsible for her family’s depravity.
The black wolf stepped nearer, the humanoid nose scenting the air. What would the black wolf smell on her? Melody wondered. Blood? Fecal matter? Her coat was slathered in every body fluid imaginable. The slaughter of her family had been a blood orgy.
The black wolf seemed unbothered by the stink emanating from Melody’s matted coat. The black wolf stepped closer, its yellow eyes battened on Melody.
Melody retreated, her lips writhing into a warning snarl.
But the black wolf kept on, her graceful gait and upright posture making Melody feel more like a pet than a peer, and this troubled her because it brought back her customary confusion, her perpetual fog of doubt. The black wolf uttered a deep, purring growl that bore no resemblance to human speech, yet Melody understood its meaning clearly: Be still. You have nothing to fear from me.
Melody retreated, but with not quite the same alarm.
Again sounded the peculiar growl from deep in the black wolf’s throat, and again it worked a mysterious alchemy on Melody’s nerves. She was still wary, but she no longer believed the black wolf’s friendliness was a ruse to lull her into complacency. No, the teeth were sheathed in the speckled red-and-black lips; the retracted claws resembled mere fishing hooks curving from the flesh pads of the black wolf’s fingers. As Melody watched, a growl trembling in her throat, the black wolf loomed over her, reached out and trailed the fishhook nails through Melody’s wiry mane. Melody twitched but did not pull away. The soothing growl came again, another gentle caress. Melody felt herself relax, her granite-hard muscles unbunching by degrees. The black wolf moved closer, the beast’s midsection on a level with Melody’s face, and though Melody knew the Three were all female, the hair here was so thick that Melody could not make out even a hint of the creature’s sex.
Both long-fingered hands were on Melody’s head now, gently stroking. The fishhook nails teased the flesh of her forehead, her temples, then combed delicately over the base of her neck. They lingered on her shoulders, moving in smooth, luxuriant curlicues, the effect somewhere between a mother’s nurturing touch and the caress of a patient lover. Melody’s snarl began to slacken, her growl to abate. She felt the wet grass beneath her palms, smelled the damp earth struggling to overcome the reek of death surrounding her. The black wolf was rubbing her back now, the fingers strong but surprisingly delicate. Melody could imagine how the creature looked when she wasn’t a wolf.
Or perhaps she didn’t have to imagine. Melody craned her head slowly up to gaze into the eyes of the black wolf, and as she did she caught a glimpse of her own face reflected in the amber eyes of the creature. What she saw didn’t surprise her on a physical level; she’d caught too many reflections of her wolflike visage to be surprised by the change anymore. No, what caught her off guard was the expression on her own face, the naked longing in her eyes. She saw how very small and hopeful she appeared.
The black wolf was grinning. Not the soulless, sadistic grin Melody had glimpsed on her own face while she was eviscerating her father and her brothers, but something far more alarming than that.
The black wolf’s eyes were gloating.
Melody went rigid under the kneading fingertips.
Because the black wolf wasn’t reassuring her, wasn’t trying to give her pleasure. The black wolf was subjugating her.
My God, Melody thought, just look at me. On all fours with my face by the black wolf’s musky cunt. She’s massaging me, yes, but she’s also holding me down. Holding. Me. Down. And she’s doing it because she can, because the pecking order is already established. It’s the queen and then the black and the red. And after that, it’s everyone else. There is no question about supremacy, no possibility of sharing the leadership.
And by God, Melody thought, she wasn’t escaping from one prison to willfully enter another. Fuck. That.
And fuck this cozening creature.
With a roar, Melody sprang upright and whipped her protracted claws in a vicious, backhanded V. Her talons opened four deep troughs on either side of the black wolf’s chest, and as the black wolf’s face stretched in a look of stupefied astonishment, Melody realized with unreasoning delight that they were the same size.
As the blood sluiced down the black wolf’s sides and the shock of what had happened gave way to a scalding fury, Melody sank her claws in just over the widening yellow eyes and raked down with all her strength. The keen eyes popped like overheated eggs, the roar that exploded from the creature’s mouth so loud it made Melody’s eardrums rattle. Melody made a fist and drove it into the black wolf’s unhinged lower jaw. The teeth clicked together and promptly sheared off the beast’s tongue, which tumbled at Melody’s feet and lay squirming like a lively wad of chewing gum.
The black wolf was staggering back and emitting an eerily human wail. It looked a thousand years old, a broken, misshapen thing, its gory blindness a fitting counterpart to its hemorrhaging sides and the clipped stump of its tongue. Melody stalked forward, knowing she’d learned the secret of the Three, the root enforcement of their terrorism.
Servants walked on all fours; masters trod on two.
To pound home her point, she spun the black wolf around, seized her around the neck and drove her to the bloodmoist grass. The creature drummed her limbs and thrashed her head in a frenzy of anguish, but Melody straddled her back, pinned her down, the hairy backbone exposed and waiting. Melody fitted her teeth around the back of the black wolf’s neck and bit down. The jerking body in her grip became a live wire, and Melody was nearly bucked off. But instead she bit deeper, chewing the vertebrae, relishing the spinal fluid. With a merciless wrench she twisted the head off the body, spun away with it.
She flirted with the idea of presenting it to the queen, but Melody knew she’d travel lighter and fight better unencumbered. A howl of triumph trembled in her throat, and she let loose with it, her back arching, her blood-smeared face kissing the sky, her full-throated song loud enough to shatter glass, to puncture eardrums.
To announce to the blond bitch Melody would be serving no one. Not anymore.
And never again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Savannah sprinted beside Short Pump and didn’t even try to suppress the tears that spilled down her cheeks.
Barb was dead.
Barb was gone forever.
And there was no way out. She and Short Pump were trapped. She’d never see Jake again. And Glenn…
She couldn’t think of that, couldn’t linger on things that could no longer be helped. That monstrous blond wolf was on their tails now and would soon run them down if they didn’t come up with some plan, some strategy to—
“This way,” Short Pump said and nearly yanked her off her feet as he veered toward the game area.
“Wait,” she said in a ragged whisper. “There’s nothing over here. There’s nowhere to hide.”
“The bathhouse,” Short Pump said.
They wove into the tunnel leading to the bathhouse stairs. They curled around a white wooden divider and hurried up the ramp, turned a corner, then hustled up the next level until they were on the second floor. For a moment they were sprinting through a tenebrous overhang that simultaneously terrified and comforted her. She hated having no idea what was around them, but she also clung to the notion that they were better off concealed by the darkness than outside and exposed.
She wished Barb were still with them.
“Got to get you somewhere safe,” he muttered.
The door to the men’s bathhouse was on the left, the women’s on the right. Up ahead, there was an opening through which they could see the water park and the lake beyond. Savannah was about to push through the door to their right—she’d selected the women’s bathhouse by habit, maybe—but Short Pump paused.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
His face clouded. “Savannah, there’s someth
ing you need to know.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait. Now come on before they—”
“Short Pump,” a voice rumbled down the tunnel.
They spun and beheld a figure silhouetted against the roller coaster lights beyond. It was wolflike, it was brawny and it was taller than it had been in human form.
But it was undoubtedly Weezer.
Weezer moved leisurely forward, strolling like he was on the way to the water park for some nighttime aquatic fun.
Short Pump stepped in front of Savannah. “You don’t want to hurt us, Weezer.”
Savannah could see the way Short Pump’s hands were trembling at his sides, but his voice was steady enough. She felt a desperate wave of affection for him.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the gravelly voice rumbled. “I want to kill you, Short Pump. And I want to rape Savannah hard enough to split her open.”
Short Pump took a step forward. “I won’t let you.”
Weezer bellowed laughter.
“This way,” Duane said over his shoulder in a voice so low Savannah could barely hear it. He nodded toward the women’s dressing room.
Weezer was shaking with laughter, but he recovered enough to say, “You won’t be safe from me in the ladies’ room, Savannah. Do you think I couldn’t hear him?” Weezer stepped closer, his eyes glinting maniacally. “I hear everything. I hear your blood beating in your veins, you fucking bitch.”
“Don’t call her that,” Short Pump said. About twenty yards separated them.
Weezer drew closer. “My God, Savannah,” he rumbled, jutting out his pelvis in a way she associated with catcalling construction workers. “I can smell your pussy from here.” He twitched his head. “I can’t wait to taste it.”
“You’re not tasting anything,” Short Pump said and set off in a grim march.
Weezer nodded. “Then I’ll kill you first, Short Pump.”
Duane clenched his fists. “My name’s Duane!” he shouted, and barreled straight at Weezer.
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