by Pat Cunningham, Savanna Kougar, Rebecca Gillan, Solara Gordon, Serena Shay
“Especially now that they know about the Doctor. That was foolish.”
“What? I dropped a little chum in the water to see if the sharks would bite. It’s not like â�¦ scat.” Ewan breathed out a growl. “Don’t tell me there really is a Doctor.”
“My sire’s been secretly working with select humans for longer than he wants anybody to know. I thought the ‘Doctor,’ whatever his real name is, was only a rumor too. Then the mutants appeared. We had a chance to examine them when Marissa’s spell turned that one band into horses. Their wolf and human DNA had been knit together with Hancock shifter. My sire is using his pack to make monsters. He has to be stopped.”
But not killed. Ewan slid away from that topic with practiced finesse. “The Monster Squad will hit here first. They found one wolf here, they’ll figure they might find more.”
“Not for some time. My sources tell me most of them are currently incarcerated. I’ll see what I can do to keep them there. Cochrane’s on the loose. He worries me more. I’m guessing he’ll head for town. He can do the most damage there.”
“Yeah. He wants to kill shifters, all he has to do is stand in the square and start shooting.” Ewan sighed. “I’m up at bat again, aren’t I?”
“You’re on standby. We have others in town watching out for Cochrane. You â�¦ ” Dante grinned viciously. “You have a prisoner to guard.”
****
Dante had put Maureen in one of his special rooms. This one had been tricked out to look like a harem room, minus all the semi-naked girls. She was awake and curled up on a pile of cushions. She stared at Ewan warily when he came in. Ewan just plain stared.
Well now. Hell -oooo , Daphne.
Somebody had got her out of her baggy duds and into a little wraparound thingie that showed off a lot of scrawny arm and leg. He still couldn’t see any boobage, but he had a better idea now of where it might be. That same somebody had applied cosmetics with a master’s hand. Her eyes now dominated her face instead of those clunky glasses, and her lips appeared larger and infinitely kissable. The blush, he figured, was probably natural.
He shut the door and plopped down on a nearby cushion. Not too nearby, because she still looked a might skittish. However, she appeared happy to see him, which he took as encouragement. “They treating you okay?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “Who was that other guy? The mastermind?”
“Nah, just the bar owner. He’s a little ticked you guys picked his business as ground zero for an invasion. Things like that cut into profits. I see he helped you clean up, though.”
“That wasn’t him.” Yep, that blush was the real deal. “Thisâ��this chorus girl saw me, and shrieked, and dragged me into the ladies’ room and said I needed a makeover. She did my face and gave me this dress and then she left me here.” She plucked at the hem of the dress. “It doesn’t really fit me. I figured I could use it for a nightie.”
“Chorus girl? A redhead?”
“No, she had pink hair. Tall, with a deep voice.” Suspicion leaped into her mascara’d eyes. “Y’know, I think she might have been a guy.”
“Ah. That’s Lamar. He’s harmless. Just don’t let him hug you. He hates to let go.”
“They’ll come straight here, you know,” she said, switching tracks. “We’ve been studying this place. We ID’d over a dozen werecreatures, not just wolves.”
“We?” Ewan said. “Or you?”
She scooted a little bit away from him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.” Finally he got his finger on why her scent hit him as so homey. “You’re pretty good at spotting wolves, aren’t you? I figure that comes natural to you. Just how much wolf you got in you?”
Chapter Thirteen:
The Mutant-landia of Damien Hancock
By Savanna Kougar
Damien Hancock, the werewolf pack leader who had first seized Talbot’s Peak, growled orders to the four betas following in his wake. “Useless curs,” he muttered, as they entered his hidden underground lab located near Pike’s Peak.
An unnatural silence enveloped him once the ten-foot thick steel door closed, sealing them inside. His terror campaign to rid Talbot’s Peak of humans and cat shapeshifters was yet to be fulfilled, to his everlasting rage.
But Damien was a werewolf man with a devious plan. Several diabolical plans to be scat exact.
He’d be damned before showing his throat, or bowing to the genius maneuvering of his second son, Dante. A reluctant respect gripped his innards, and Damien barked a harsh growl at himself.
The cat-licking, human-loving renegade cub�who favored his dam and had been corrupted by her soft paw�countered his every move like a master chessboard player but with deadly-attack strategies when required. Dante could fang-rip out the jugular with the best of them.
He’d learned that much from his sire.
Damien smirked, then reminded himself he owned the last fang-ruthless move. Toothy grinning, he sauntered slowly, studying Morloxian’s latest army of demon-eyed killer beasts.
Behind a specialized, black-ops grade of plexiglass, on both sides of the ten foot corridor, mutant werewolves occupied huge cubicles. Frozen in a state of stasis, the hideously formed beasts could be activated, loosed on an unsuspecting enemyâ��or any populationâ��at a moment’s notice.
In anticipation, Damien grinned, his lips thinning over his protuding fangs. As he understood the mad scientist’s explanation, originally Dire wolf variants had been infected with a dinosaur-ravaging virus discovered in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Of course, Morloxian constantly added his own evil-genius refinements to the gene-bubbling brew.
Recently he’d included the murderous instincts and superior agility of Jackals and Hyenas. Morloxian’s gleeful recitation of the process still echoed inside Damien’s head, the memory like a B horror movie but without the humorous silliness he enjoyed on occasion.
As he watched the steel door slide open, Damien girded his loins, preparing himself for the offal stench of the mad-dog scientist. Morloxian remained in a perpetual state of half shift, and no matter his attempt to cleanse himself, the odor stuck to him like fresh tomcat scat.
“Sir.” Morloxian glided forward in his strange gait, offering his deformed paw-hand, the one with the unusually long and dextrous fingers.
Random patches and tufts of werewolf fur covered his ‘bright as a billiard ball’ bald headâ��and his body as Damien had been a witness to once. Pained howls to hell, once was enough, as the inane saying went.
To his credit, Morloxian always wore an immaculately clean white lab coat. Damien resisted the urge to howl a laugh as he briefly embraced the lumpy monstrosity within his semi-morphed hand. Whiskers sprouted haphazardly on the scientist’s Boris Karloff like features, giving him a cartoon-comical appearance.
“Impressive,” Damien growled, referring to the stasis army of mutant werewolves he’d just viewed.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Morloxian joked in his cracking-odd voice. He waggled his mismatched brows, bushy brows that should only have belonged on a grizzled old mountain man.
“Show me. Are the funds in order?” Damien thought to ask. A happy mad scientist was exceptionally, insanely creative, as he’d learned.
“More than sufficient, sir. My team has made good progress on those samples you sent of the horse-altered mutants. Although, magick is always a tricky beast to define, and incorporate into the genetic matrix. However,” Morloxian stretched his thick, semi-twisted mouth into a smile. “I assure you it can be accomplished.”
“I have every faith in your ability. That brings me to one reason for this meeting. I have word from a trusted source… one of your team is an infiltrator.” Damien let the rest of his thought hang and blow in the mighty wind of his alpha power, while keenly observing Morloxian’s reaction.
“Could you be more specific, sir?” Nothing but respect shone in Morloxian’s very human eyes. “You vetted, and hav
e the dossiers on every one of my assistants.”
“Yes. So, I do,” Damien widened his lips into a smile of acceptance, given the emotional fragility of the werewolf-bitten human. “Why don’t you take me on the grand tour? The nose knows. Sniffing out the scat vermin could be quite entertaining for all of us. And,” Damien enticed, “give you more useful genetics to play with… perhaps, even a cure.”
Morloxian frowned, only enough to demonstrate his point, not as a challenge. “I no longer care about a cure for my… ah… condition, sir. I’ve come to enjoy my franken-wolf state.” He smiled like a jester fool atop a king’s hill. “Some females seem to enjoy my ‘extra’ prowess.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” Damien clapped his ‘ace’ against Dante on the shoulder in an intentional human gesture of affection. Such bonding created loyalty, as he’d learned over his lengthy life. “How is your harem?”
A red stain spread over Morloxian’s face, then the bald areas of his head.
“No need for words,” Damien growled in a friendly manner. “Show me your latest project. Then, we’ll sniff out the infiltrator, and have our fun.”
“Mammoth genes,” Morloxian burst out. “They’re all over the black market now. I was able to secure a viable set. You should see the prototype I’ve created.”
Damien wickedly glittered inside with the possibilities of such a formidable creature. “A mammoth mutant werewolf?”
“With tusks that can take out any military tank,” Morloxian enthused.
“That does take priority…” Damien envisioned the ‘out of the bowels of hell’ damage he could wreak on Talbot’s Peak proper… on Dante’s fortress, the Pleasure Club.
Chapter Fourteen:
Secret Origins
By Pat Cunningham
“My great-grammy was a hunter,” Maureen said. She wouldn’t look Ewan straight in the eye. “She didn’t always kill the monsters she caught. Sometimes she, uh â�¦ “
Ewan nodded. “Your great-grammy married a wolf shifter.”
“Oh no. She never married. She just really loved her â�¦ work. I’ve got a ton of freaky relatives.”
“Uh-huh,” Ewan murmured, while thinking, You go, granny . “So your branch of the family tree got the wolf genes?”
“Some wolf genes,” she corrected. “It’s thinned out over the generations. I’ve got enough that I can spot other werebeasts.”
“But not enough to shift.”
“No.” She kicked at a cushion. “Not enough to shift. That’s why I’ve been trying to find a real werewolf. The more I found out about Talbot’s Peak, the more I hoped â�¦ but you’re not traditional werewolves, are you? You can’t help me.”
“Not that way,” Ewan admitted. “Doesn’t mean we couldn’t come up with something. Magic or whatnot. It worked for the Mayor. He started out human, but now he turns into a squirrel three nights a month.”
She finally looked back at him, and even smiled a little. “You don’t have to lie to cheer me up.”
“No lie. I’m telling you, Talbot’s Peak is one weird place.” He edged a little closer to her. She didn’t move away. “As long as we’re coming clean on our backgrounds, I might as well fess up. I’m not all wolf either. I’m mostly coyote. And I’m not a cowboy. I was born and raised in Passaic, New Jersey. The wolf half of the family’s related to the Hancocks, so when my paws started itching I came west.”
“So it’s mostly wolves here?”
“It’s mostly bunnies. They breed faster. The wolves just think they’re in charge. There’s a tiger clan out in the foothills. Some bears, a few miscellaneous breeds. That’s it for apex predators. Everything else is herbivorous. Except for the Mayor, we’re all born shifters. No bitee, no changee. Sorry, darlin’. That’s just how it is.”
“Yeah.” Maureen’s shoulders slumped. They just happened to slump in his direction. Somebody had to help hold them up, so he put his arm around them. Chaos, they were bony. His wolf instincts sat up, stretched, and shook off the coyote influence. No he-wolf ever let a she-wolf go hungry. You had to look out for your pack.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked her.
“I dunno. Lunch, maybe. Ted got some cheese fries at the bar while we were looking for a subject. I grabbed one off his plate.” She rubbed her flat stomach. “I guess I could eat something. Might as well. I’m too wound up to sleep.”
“Tell you what: how about we stroll over to the kitchen and see what leftovers they haven’t tossed out yet? Dante always overbuys on burger because he knows the kitchen staff snacks. Not to mention the hot wings are to die for. They’re probably out of those.”
She had her hand on his forearm. It was small and warm and trembling. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Long run? Well, Dante will keep you locked up and out of the way until we can deal with this mess, then have somebody, probably me, drive you back to the exit with a warning to leave town or else. Short term, you’re going to get dragged to the kitchen and forced to eat a proper meal.” Sudden terror clutched at his gut. “You’re not vegetarian, are you?”
“I’ve got wolf in me. How could I be?”
Thank Chaos. He puffed out a yip of relief. “Then allow me to treat you to dinner, Miss Kidnapper Hunter Wolf Gal.”
He offered her his arm. She smiled at him. Then she whapped him over the head with a cushion.
Surprise more than impact knocked Ewan over backward. The back of his head said howdy to the wall. He shook off the stars and whipped the cushion aside just in time to spot Maureen fling back the door and dash into the hallway.
Typical human. Not quite as smart but just as tricky as any coyote born. “My kind of woman,” he said with a grin, and leaped up to lope in pursuit.
Chapter Fifteen:
Werewolf and Witch By Lineage
By Savanna Kougar
Werewolf and witch by lineage, Sulandra, used her psi-power, listening to her grandsire, Damien Hancock, interrogate and shmooze Morloxianâ��the humpy-bumpy, butt sniffer. Scat, so far she’d been able to fend off his grab-ass, clumsy advances whenever she did her own conversational interrogation of him. After all, even mad scientists had to be fed, and she’d signed on to be his personal cook.
Mammoth mutant werewolf! That got Sulandra’s rabid attention. Escaping, her goal the compound’s delivery tunnel, she paused in her stealthy stride.
The very instant the mafioso-like pack leader entered the underground lab’s main corridor, Sulandra had realized it was time to get the effing hell out of Dodge, or in this case Colorado.
Damien’s on-the-hunt scent for the infiltrator, her, hit Sulandra’s nostrils like acid. She’d grabbed her backpack, then slowly wended her way through the black-as-tar labyrinth.
With her superior senses, she’d memorized the path despite being blindfolded, then allowed sight only once inside the delivery areaâ��larger than any warehouse Sulandra had ever seen. Suddenly low, hideous warning snarls blasted down her human witchy spine.
Yep, the hellhound-werewolf combo was on guard. “Hey, Yorgo, you’re going to let me pass without a big nasty battle… aren’t you?” Sulandra snatched the large ball of raw beef out of her pocket. “Here ya go,” she soothingly coaxed.
Yorgo’s thunder-engine growl ceased. He sniffed noisily, his blood-red nostrils like strangely moving orbs in the blackness. Sulandra hadn’t been stupid enough to try infusing the meat with any drug, potion, or spell. Yorgo would have immediately known, wanting to chomp her down as a snack instead.
Sulandra gave the beef ball a toss toward him. As his jaws snapped like a wildlife trap around the meat, she scooted against the wall past his giant bulk. Yorgo emanated a poisonous odor that reminded her of a cigarette smoke-saturated motel room. With difficulty, Sulandra held her breath and stifled her urge to cough her lungs out.
She ran. From the palm of her hand, Sulandra threw a lightballâ��her own witchy version of ‘gps’â��having prepared it for this day. Simultan
eously, Yorgo’s enraged roar shook the steel and concrete tunnel. His heavy footsteps raced after her, thunder meeting an earthquake.
With adrenaline flooding her bloodstream, Sulandra sprinted faster. A champion marathoner in werewolf circles, she gained a bit of distance, even as licks of fire roasted her human butt.
No! she ordered when her wolf ferociously growled, demanding to be let loose. Sulandra still needed her human fingers to open the delivery door. That is, if the code hadn’t been changed or automatically switched off.
Ouch-scat! hellfire lashed her back… but, irony of ironies, she’d been living in the lab-boiling pits of hell, alright. Charging into the short tunnel leading to the delivery entrance, Sulandra threw her force at the lightball. Instantly, it sizzled brightly, then reversed direction, flying past her.
Yorgo screamed in agony. Sulandra slowed and whipped around. Direct hit! Right between his four, monstrously big, blazing crimson eyes.
Unable to see, Yorgo crashed about searching for her by scent. Resuming her running stride, Sulandra sprinted for the control panel before…
Blinding light filled the entire warehouse-like area. Sulandra stopped in her tracks. Momentarily. Keeping her eyelids clenched so her retinas wouldn’t burn, she opened her psi eyes.
“Surrender, bitch.” As if he snarled through a thousand megaphones, Damien Hancock’s voice pulsed around her.
“Yeah, yeah, granddad,” Sulandra muttered under her breath, while rapidly touching in the code.
She hoped to Goddess moon, she didn’t have to waste her supernatural powers on tripping the circuitry. Escaping Damien Hancock’s formidable reach, would take far more than freeing herself from his massive crypto-monster lab.
Just as Sulandra heard the frequency hum meant to paralyze her, then jellify her whole, the thirty foot steel doors began to buzz and slide open. Whirling, Sulandra sped the short distance, then shoved through the crack.