by Pat Cunningham, Savanna Kougar, Rebecca Gillan, Solara Gordon, Serena Shay
“Chaos bite my balls,” he said. “You want to become a werewolf.”
Her hands shook a little on the wheel. “Do not.”
“Sure. That’s why you’re hanging around with the Loser Patrol. They couldn’t find Bigfoot if he sat behind ‘em at Chuck E. Cheese, but sooner or later even morons get lucky. All you need is one bite from the right wolf and you can be one of the pack. Is that it?”
“You don’t know anything!” She grabbed at the stickshift and gave it a yank. “Just shut up!”
“I’d like to,” he said, his voice oddly strangled, “but â�¦ “
Maureen took her eyes off the road. She’d overshot her grab for the stick. The wolf didn’t look like he minded all that much. She yelped and let go. The van swerved dangerously close to the berm. Maureen locked both hands on the wheel and wrestled the van onto the center of the road. Once they’d smoothed out again she barked at Ewan, “Cover up.”
“What with?”
“I don’t care! Use the floor mat if you have to. There’s a pizza box next to your feet. Use that.”
“You’re just determined to suck all the fun out of our situation,” he said. He had the gall to emphasize suck. Maureen glared at him. He snickered. She gritted her teeth and continued driving doggedly toward Talbot’s Peak.
Chapter Ten:
Hasta la Vista, Baby
By Pat Cunningham
Cochrane knew better than to put up a fuss when the police charged their motel room. An old hand at dealing with the law, he tossed his gun under the bed and then demanded to be taken to the hospital, citing his broken wrist. The rest of the team took their cue from him and dropped to their knees with their hands clasped behind their heads. An ambulance was duly summoned. The cops took statements and checked IDs while they waited for Cochrane’s transport.
Cochrane knew searching the room would come later, after they’d been hauled off for questioning. Let ‘em find the gun. It and the team’s knives were nothing, small fry in the order of ordinance. The real arsenal, with which he intended to assault Talbot’s Peak, remained hidden in the trunk of his car. As long as the cops missed that, his plans could proceed with only minor delay.
Around this time the desk clerk and the manager showed up and informed Cochrane and his henchmen they would have to vacate the room immediately, no refunds. Cochrane told them the sheets hadn’t been clean anyway. Then the ambulance arrived and Cochrane was carted off to the hospital, while the others were conducted to the police station.
At the end of the X-rays, shots and bandaging Cochrane announced his pressing need for a toilet. The doctor pointed him down the hall. His police guard had gone to get coffee. Cochrane detoured at the first side corridor, found a stairwell, and followed it to an emergency exit. He emerged into an empty night. Small-town cops, gotta love ‘em. They weren’t paid enough to be good at their jobs.
Shortly, safe in a Denny’s half a mile from the hospital and with half a cup of coffee in his belly, Cochrane took out the cell phone the cops’ pat-down had missed, and called Atcheson. His big blond aide-de-camp answered on the fifth ring. “Sir! Are you safe?”
“For the moment,” Cochrane said. “What about you? I take it you boys are in the hoosegow. This line secure?”
“Yeah, they’re questioning us. I’m alone right now. That damn dog in the parking lot, it â�¦ well, the cops are pretty much leaving me on my own until I can catch a shower.” He lowered his voice. “They didn’t get all of us. Pete and Maureen are still on the loose.”
“Have they charged any of you with anything?”
“Barry, maybe. Depends on if he had any weed on him. We all ditched our knives when we realized there were cops on the way. You were the only one with a gun.”
“Then you should be good where you are. Sit tight and don’t tell them anything. I’ll see if I can get in touch with Maureen and Pete. One of them will be by to bail you out, assuming the police don’t just release you. Technically we’ve done nothing.”
“Except fire a gun in a motel room.”
“They’ll have to catch me first.” Which was unlikely. Cochrane took a sip of his coffee. This might be the perfect time to dump his half-wit helpers. They’d proven marginally useful up until now, tracking down monsters for him to kill and doing far more tedious research than he would have himself. When it came to the crunch, however, none of them truly had a hunter’s heart. Except perhaps for Atcheson, who could be a bit too enthusiastic sometimes.
Yeah, he’d be better off cutting them loose. He knew what he’d be facing in Talbot’s Peak, and he’d always worked better alone. “Just keep your mouths shut,” he told Atcheson. “I’ll be in touch.” He cut the connection and deleted the team’s numbers from his phone.
Better fuel up. No telling when he’d get a chance to eat again. Then hike back to the motel and pick up his car. Then on to Talbot’s Peak. Once there â�¦ Cochrane scowled at the cast on his wrist and put a new name at the top of his list of freaks to wipe out first.
****
In the restroom of the diner across the street from the Rocky Top Motel, a stocky young man with glasses and dark skin took out a cell phone and punched in a number on speed dial. His name was neither Silent Sam, as Ewan Carter had dubbed him, nor Pete, as he was known to his cryptozoologist companions. They would have had trouble pronouncing his real name, or questioned the accent he hid by keeping silent as much as possible.
He spoke now into the phone, in terse Urdu. “The mission has been compromised,” he informed his true employer. “The team has been taken into police custody. The hunter has been taken to hospital with a minor injury. I doubt he’ll stay there long.”
“I agree. He’ll head straight for the Peak and wreak havoc. Let’s let him go about his business. Havoc fits well with my plans.”
“There’s more, lord. The wolf they captured spoke of a Doctor who created Hancock’s mutant werewolves. He later denied it, but still. This is the first true confirmation we’ve had regarding Hancock’s pet scientist.”
The other hissed in a quick breath. “Where is the wolf?”
“He escaped, lord. Apparently he had a cohort. I assume he’s on his way to Talbot’s Peak.”
“It always comes back to that cursed town, doesn’t it? Very well. Return to Talbot’s Peak. See if you can find that wolf, and keep an eye out for the hunter. Hancock’s scientist holds the key to creating an unstoppable army. I will have that scientist, and that key. And Talbot’s Peak, in due time.”
“Pete” bowed minutely over his phone. “Yes, Lord Ghan.”
Chapter Eleven:
Blade Runner ~ Rabbit to the Rescue
By Savanna Kougar
Blade Runner caught the glint in Dante’s eye as soon as his alpha wolf friend entered the Pleasure Club’s fight arena. Leaping, he morphed to rabbit humanoid, then dispatched his latest opponent with a rapid, continuous thump-thump of his feet.
True, the boar humanoid staggered backward one drunken-like step at a time as Blade Runner pounded his jaw, as he punished the hulking man-beast’s face with his kicks. Soon enough to suit the referee, the brute’s smallish eyeballs crossed, spun like wormholes, and disappeared upward. He bellowed a defeated grunt, then crashed against the curved side of the arena wall.
“Timber!” someone shouted from the whooping, cheering crowd.
“You will excuse me,” Blade Runner acknowledged the ringmaster. “I must tend to a matter of business.” He gave a nod toward Dante, who leaned arms folded, waiting for him.
“Yeah, go ahead,” Jarrod, the gator shifter dismissed. “When the boss man wants ya, no questions asked.”
Pausing only to slide into his fighter’s robe, then shift to his human form, Blade Runner made quick work of moving through the crowd. The semi smirk on Dante’s face clued him in. The alpha had an offbeat mission in mind, and obviously required Blade Runner’s assistance.
“The wolf man with a plan?” Blade Runner raised his brow.
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br /> “Fresh organic carrot juice,” Dante tempted, arching his brow.
“You know I am unable to resist such a delight.” Blade Runner fell into step beside Dante as the wolf pivoted, striding down the corridor. “Is there a danger to the Peak? To our territory?”
“You could say that. Monster hunter named Cochrane has a grudge large as a bull elk against Vernon and the former mayor.”
“Ah, yes, I recall that amusing tale. I will assume this Cochrane wants his brand of revenge.”
Blade Runner followed Dante inside one of the club’s herbie juice barsâ��this one obviously closest to the fight arena. His nose twitched uncontrollably, filled with the fragrance of freshly delivered carrots. He’d developed quite the fondness for the Earth vegetable, especially the heirloom varieties.
“Revenge, yeah,” Dante growled, once Blade Runner had savored a tall glass of juice. “Cochrane has a car trunk full of serious weapons. He plans on playin’ the hero for humanity by going Rambo on Talbot’s Peak.”
“Rambo?” Blade Runner’s inner rabbit ears stood tall.
“Never mind.” Dante grinned, and leaned his elbows on their corner table. “Forgot you’re still learning about our culture, space bunny. Speaking of, is that UFO craft of yours operational right now?”
That perked Blade Runner’s ears even higher. “I took a spin the other night. Quite operational. What manner of mission do you have in mind?”
“Got backup plans in place.” Dante grinned like a wolf who knew his prey was helpless. “But scat, I like this plan a whole lot better. You know how we discussed those abductions by the Grays, and keeping those little bio-bots and their masters outta our skies.”
****
Enjoying the aerial chase, his blood sizzling fiercely, Blade Runner soared above Cochrane as he sped down the highway toward Talbot’s Peak. Of course, at this point the monster hunter didn’t realize he was the hunted — the one being tracked not only by the space rabbit, but by Dante’s ground team stationed along this stretch.
Just for his own amusement, Blade Runner hummed the tones from the movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Ah, humankind and their imaginings… they had no idea about the breadth and depth of life in their solar system let alone life in the surrounding galaxy.
Be that as it may, Blade Runner had allowed himself to be attired in one of Lamar’s silver, stretch jumpsuits. He also wore an alien Gray Halloween mask made out of something dreadful called latex. Just to add his own sense of the weird, he poked his rabbit ears through two holes in the mask.
Once Cochrane traveled over a long straight section of the roadâ��so anyone else driving could easily spot his stalled car — Blade Runner made his UFO move. He blasted Cochrane with a cone of white blinding light. At the same moment, he touched on a specialized laser beam shutting the car’s engine down.
For seconds, Blade Runner let Cochrane stew in the juices of his own terror. “Having fun now, monster hunter?” he muttered, before activating his beam me up Scottie tech, which was really only for gathering rock and flora specimens. It should work without scrambling too much of the idiot human’s genes and particle matrix.
Of course, the man’s garments wouldn’t survive the trip aboard his craft. Blade Runner prepared himself mentally for the ugly lumpy sight. Mirth also caused him to chuckle at the big bad hunter’s I’m bare-ass naked predicament.
“Ah yes, I need the proper probe, don’t I?” Blade Runner reminded himself.
Cochrane landed with a decided thump on the flat surface Blade Runner used to prepare meals. “Hover. Shields up,” he spoke to the craft’s control core. A soft buzz sounded letting him know they were now invisible to advanced-tech sweeps.
“On with the show,” Blade Runner bolstered himself for the task ahead. Neural wand in hand — especially effective against humans — he moved within his kitchen.
Menacingly, Blade Runner pointed the silvery wand at the blinking but surprisingly alert Cochrane. “What’s up, doc?” Blade Runner greeted, his voice muffled by the mask. Inside, he grinned at his Bugs Bunny imitation, most probably lost on his captive.
The beast-distasteful human lifted his head, staring the proverbial daggers. “You fucking alien freak, where am I?”
Blade Runner zapped the bravado-stupid human between his blackhole-looking eyes. His over-large head hit the hard surface. Crack!
“Obedience is required, pathetic creature,” he intoned, using a semi-robotic voiceâ��the affect likely unheard due to the mask.
Cochrane stayed dead still for several minutes. “Probe me,” he dared in a voice like a buzz saw, a term Blade Runner now understood. “Get it over with. I know you alien freakazoids aren’t allowed to kill us.”
“Your knowledge astounds me, mere human.” Blade Runner moved so he stood beside the ghastly smelling monster hunter. He pointed the wand at his ape-hairy chest.
By the cosmos, Cochrane’s odor could knock out planetary life for miles around. Blade Runner resisted the urge to douse him with a cleansing ray bath. For that matter any shapeshifter worth his nose would have scented the hunter’s arrival, and cleared out, or taken the mental midget down.
“What?” Cochrane challenged, his tone nasty as a bulldog with a rotten tooth… Blade Runner had crossed paths with such a beast once. “Alien motherfucker? Aren’t you going to turn me over, and stick that probe up my butt?”
Blade Runner winced at the thought. “Your genes are hardly worth a butt probe. Although… come to think of it, your genetic code could serve as a warning of how not to seed another planet world.”
“Wait!” the monster hunter’s voice boomed like a crack of thunder, and fear edged his tone. He eyed Blade Runner’s rabbit ears for long seconds, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. “You’re… you’re one of those mutant hybrids. From the secret lab. That hell-mad doctor is real. So, you cowardly ugly aliens are collaborating…”
“Collaborating!?” Blade Runner boomed back, the sound carrying despite his mask. “Why would we bother with a mad scientist on Earth? Those are a dime a dozen, to phrase it in your colloquial terms. Our labs are quite sufficientâ��”
Cochrane writhed in an attempt to leap up. Blade Runner zinged a pulse into his heart muscle, lightly shocking him. The big bad monster hunter gurgled a scream, laying inert as unformed clay.
“You crude beasts never learn,” Blade Runner reprimanded. “No wonder your planet is a prison world.”
Given the allotment of time had passed for Dante’s crew to liberate Cochrane’s cache of weaponry, Blade Runner decided he’d endured enough. About to press his palm device and activate the return beam, he heard the smelly, hapless hunter croak, “What’s up, doc? That’s what you said.”
“Eh, what’s up, doc?” Blade Runner cartoon-voiced. Indeed, amusement was where you found it.
“I got it,” Cochrane sneered. “You’re in league with those filthy bastards, the Chinese. They got that Jade Rabbit rover on the moon. This is some sort of creepy inside joke, right… Bugs Bunny?”
“You’re brainy assessment is quite wrong.” Blade Runner waggled his rabbit ears. “With all of your research on monsters, don’t you know?” He paused for dramatic affect. “Bugs Bunny, as you refer to him, is one of us.”
Chapter Twelve:
Doctor? Who?
By Pat Cunningham
Dante’s enemiesâ��and the guardian of Talbot’s Peak had quite a fewâ��often wondered if the seemingly-omniscient wolf ever slept. For instance, he was still awake and dressed at three in the morning when the van pulled up to the bar. Ewan, naked as a jaybird and just as chatty, got out, with a human she in tow. He pounded on the bar’s locked door and demanded to see Dante. “Hate to bust in like this,” he said when finally ushered into Dante’s presence, “but we got a hunter out at the Rocky Top looking to blast all comers. Oh, this is Maureen. One of us kidnapped the other one. We’re still working out who’s who.”
“Are you the Doctor?�
�� the woman asked.
For a long time Dante just stood there, his narrow glare bouncing back and forth between the shifter male and human female. Finally he took Maureen by the hand. “My office,” he ordered Ewan.
Ewan shrugged and left Maureen to Dante. He wouldn’t hurt her, even though she was human and a hunter of sorts. She was probably safer with Dante than she was with her erstwhile partners.
Once in Dante’s office he shifted and curled up on the floor for a wolfnap. This had been one nonstop Saturday night, and only looked to get more interesting as the hours wore on. Best to grab rest when he could.
Sure enough, way too soon Dante woke him with a nudge of his foot. Ewan got up and switched back to human, and accepted the Levis and shirt Dante handed him. “How’s Maureen?” he asked while he pulled on the pants.
“Fine, for the time being. You?”
“Just a might ticked. I mean, getting a bag thrown over your head and dragged into a van can be fun, but only if you plan for it.” He buttoned up the shirt. “Same for being tied to a bed. It’s just not the same when hunters do it. Oh, and that dingo dog just happened to show up at the Rocky Top. Funny how that worked out.”
“Hoover warned me about that bunch as soon as they checked in. I was fishing for information. I needed bait. Dugger rode along in case matters got out of hand. I have confidence in your ability to preserve your own hide.”
“A little warning would have been nice.” So would an apology, but Ewan knew better. As an alpha, Dante had to be ruthless sometimes. Ewan shrugged it off with a coyote’s what-the-hell attitude. He’d chucked a human into Dante’s lap, so he figured they were even. “The Loony Toon Brigade is after those mutts of your dad’s. They think we’re building werewolves out of innocent humans. Cochrane wants Vernon McMahon and Lance Lincoln’s heads on a skewer. Any other shifter dies along the way, he’ll be happy.”
“Why did you bring that woman here?”
“It wasn’t exactly my idea. Anyway, they already know you’re involved, or at least the bar is. They came here hunting a werewolf victim, didn’t they? This bunch has done their homework. Cochrane’s a pro, and the rest of them are just stupid enough to be dangerous.”