by Pat Cunningham, Savanna Kougar, Rebecca Gillan, Solara Gordon, Serena Shay
Ewan’s already-sunk gut did a further plummet: Shaggy and Agent Mulder.
Ewan shot a glance out the window. The van still sat where Maureen had parked it. Two of Dante’s men in wolf form sniffed around the parking lot. They were the only beings out there, active or otherwise.
No Maureen.
It couldn’t have been Cochrane. There would have been gunfire, maybe explosions. He looked around the wreck of the bar for a blond-haired body. Freddie had only been armed with a knife, but he wouldn’t have let that inhibit him.
Where was she?
One of the wolves turned toward him from questioning the humans. Ewan was surprised to see Dante. If the boss wolf himself had gotten involved, this must be worse than a hunter attack. And the only thing worse than a hunter attack �
He leaped at Dante before the alpha could speak. “What happened? Where’s Maureen?”
Dante held up his hand. “Take it easy. Your hunter buddies showed up to attack us, but a pack of my sire’s wolves attacked them first. They took the girl and two other humans. Cochrane wasn’t involved. At last report he was on his way to Talbot’s Peak, but he seems to have disappeared.” Dante’s expression promised the head hunter’s whereabouts wouldn’t stay secret for long. “It’s all right. They won’t be harmed right away. I have an agent in the pack. They’re taking them to the Doctor.”
Just when you thought a gut couldn’t sink any lower. “Kidnapped? How is that all right?”
“They’re being taken to the Doctor’s laboratory. We know it’s in Colorado, just not the exact location. Once we’ve got it pinpointed, we’ll move in.” He laid his hand on Ewan’s shoulder. “I already have agents en route to Colorado. We’ll get her back unharmed.” His personal phone, the one that operated off the grid, buzzed. “Excuse me.” Dante pulled out the phone. “Yes?”
Ewan wandered over to the bar in a daze. For once in his life his glib brain went on hold. It allowed one thought to whirl around inside it like a dervish: She’s gone. Her and her brains and her smile and her laugh and her smell with its touch of randy she-wolf. Taken right out from under his nose. He was a failure as a coyote.
He’d never even gotten to see her tits.
The wolf in him kicked the coyote in the ass. You going to just stand there and cry at the moon? Or you going to do something about it?
“Chaos, yes,” Ewan growled aloud. Bite those Hancock wolves. “Nobody takes my girl.”
Dante was still speaking into his phone. “Follow them. A squad of Tiger Yakuza doesn’t just up and take off for no reason. Keep me apprised.” He returned the phone to his pocket. “Get some breakfast. We’ve got this.”
“Screw that.” Nobody was getting anything until he had Maureen and her smile and her brains and her tits safe in his arms again. “I want in.”
Chapter Twenty-six:
To the Rescue!
By Pat Cunningham
Ewan had never considered himself a praying man. Right now, cooped up in a tiny flying saucer zipping toward Colorado miles above the ground, he was seriously rethinking that decision. He muttered a few syllables to Chaos on the off chance it would help. After an ill-considered glance out the hatch at the blur of earth far below, he added a second prayer consisting of much stronger words.
“Yer lookin’ a little green there, mate,” Dugger said from behind the controls. “These skimmers take getting used to. Y’might want to steer clear of the windows.”
Too little too late there, Ewan thought, while just managing to keep last night’s dinner in his gut where it belonged. “Where the hell’d Dante get this E.T. mobile anyway?”
“Dante knows people.”
“He never told me he knew Luke Skywalker.” Dugger was right; the flight went far better if he didn’t try to look at the scenery. “I don’t suppose he’s got a couple lightsabers stashed in the glove compartment?”
“It’s not that kind of a run, mate. We’re just supposed to buzz the place, find out if your sheila’s there, then give Dante the lowdown and let him make the tough decisions. That’s why he gets the big bucks ‘stead of us.”
Ewan growled to himself. He found he could keep his meal down better if he thought about Maureen instead of how far below the nearest terra firma lay. Trouble was, he could only think about Maureen in the hands of Damien Hancock’s twisted Doctor. His hackles had been stiff for a good hour now and showed no sign of settling. He wanted her in his arms again, with his mouth firmly latched onto her tits and her wolf-human scent in his nostrils. If he didn’t get her back he was going to rip somebody’s throat out.
Chaos bite it! Was this how wolves lived all the time, with their stupid macho alpha genes sending them charging blindly after their mates? No wonder they had no sense of humor.
“Scat on that,” he said. “We find the place, park this thing, slip inside and get her out, and then we call in Dante. If we can blow something up along the way, so much the better.”
Dugger bared his teeth in a grin as wide as the Outback. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
****
Dante’s intel was spot on the money. Once on the ground they found the hidden access door with very little trouble. Dugger went to work on the seals while Ewan kept watch.
Ewan felt uneasy, and not because of the heavily-armed troops who might or might not be waiting for them on the other side of the door. He’d managed to wrestle his stomach into compliance so he could scan the roads from above during their flight to Colorado. He hadn’t spotted anything that looked like a delivery truck. Maureen and her fellow captives should be well on their way to this installation by now. Damien Hancock didn’t hire henchwolves who stopped for beer and a burger. And shouldn’t a place so painstakingly hidden have surveillance out the wazoo? Shouldn’t alarms be going off?
“Call me a scat-faced optimist,” Ewan said, “but does all this strike you as just a hair too easy?”
“Never look a gift roo up the bunghole, I always say,” Dugger replied. “There! That’s got it.”
The hatch swung open easily, with no betraying creaks. Dugger led the way inside. Ewan followed him into a narrow corridor lined by raw rock walls. He smelled metal and machine oil up ahead, and heard a few drips and clinks, but no noises from living beings.
“Easy peasy,” Dugger whispered. “Wonder where they are?”
“On break, maybe?” Ewan said. His mind kept conjuring images of foxes, henhouses, and farmers with shotguns.
“According to the blueprints,” Dugger said, “prisoners are usually keptâ��”
“Dante had blueprints?”
“More like a map. Danteâ��”
“Knows people. Gotcha.”
That was it for talk. Dugger conveyed through body language that they were coming up on a possible inhabited area. He pulled a handgun out of his waistband. Ewan would play it by ear.
They crept up to the corner and peered around it. And saw�
Chapter Twenty-seven:
�Or Not
By Pat Cunningham
“Bugger me,” Dugger swore.
Ewan would have gladly, had he thought it would do any good. Or knew what it meant. It wasn’t going to change things.
Here in what should have been the center of Damien Hancock’s hive they had found absolutely squat. Zero. Zilch. Nada and loose change. No guards, no scientists, no mutant monsters. A fat lot of nothing greeted Ewan and Dugger behind every door they tried. In one huge chamber they did find a set of eight-foot clear plastic cylinders lining the walls, but these were empty too. The offshoot rooms they explored were filled with even less of the same. They stank of exotic chemicals and wolf adrenaline, all of it at least a week old.
“Shit,” Ewan said.
“Thought I just said that.”
“American subtitles. Where is everybody?”
“Y’got me, mate. Looks like the whole place has gone walkabout. Must’ve happened right after Dante’s spy lit out. Hey! Where you going?”
“Back to the flying saucer.” She wasn’t here. She wasn’t going to be here. The van and the wolves who had taken her weren’t coming here. They were headed to wherever Damien Hancock had moved his pet scientist. That was where Ewan needed to be, not this empty nest.
“Hang on a mo. My sniffer’s got something.”
Ewan reluctantly retraced his steps. Now he caught it also, a fresher smell than the fading traces they’d encountered so far. Human, somewhat nervous, and close by.
Gun out, Dugger led the way. “You want to kick the door in? I hear it’s the American way.”
He’d pretty much lost heart by now. “Nah.”
“Suit yourself.” Dugger swung the door wide.
Two white-coated science types sat at a table long enough for a dozen, in what had probably been the lab’s cafeteria up until a week ago. They were drinking coffee and listlessly playing cards. Both leaped to their feet when Dugger and Ewan stepped in.
“Uh, hi?” said the skinny one in the thick glasses. “Are you the new owners?”
“Depends,” Dugger said. “What happened to the old owners?”
“No clue,” the skinny one’s stockier buddy said. “Dr. Morloxian called a meeting one morning, told us he was going into business for himself, packed up his experiments and split. We tried to get hold of Mr. Hancock, but he never talks to us. I hate this absentee owner crap.”
“He could’ve left his harem,” Glasses muttered. “We worked hard. We deserve something for that.”
“Where’d Morloxian go?” Ewan demanded.
“Search me,” Glasses said. “He just up and left. Maybe he got a better offer from somebody.” He eyed Dugger’s gun nervously. “Are you the FBI? Are we prisoners?”
“From what I hear, there were close to two hundred people here,” Dugger said. “They take off too?”
“Some,” Stocky said. “A few went with Morloxian, but most of us didn’t. He’s brilliant and all, but really chintzy. Try squeezing a paycheck out of him. The rest of us hung around, hoping to hear from Hancock, but so far he’s been unreachable. I’m signing up for unemployment tomorrow.” He too eyed Dugger’s gun. “I mean, if it’s okay.”
“No worries, mate. I know somebody wants to talk to you bright young lads. Probably offer you jobs. Interested?”
“Hell yeah,” Stocky said. “This place sucks. It smells like wet dog all the time.”
“You said he had a harem,” Ewan said.
Dugger slanted a look at him. “That’s your takeaway?”
“Morloxian did,” Glasses said morosely. “We weren’t allowed to touch them. He kept them locked up. Had to. There was only one other woman here, and she ran off the second she got the chance. The mutants,” he explained to their blank expressions. “All the mutants were male.”
“No she-wolves?” Dugger mused. “No wonder they’re so bloody vicious. Bet if they scented a sheilaâ��”
He broke off and stared at Ewan with a growing horror nowhere near the size of Ewan’s own. Dugger didn’t know about Maureen’s wolf-shifter genes. Morloxian couldn’t either. The sexually-frustrated mutant werewolves would pick up on it in seconds. Once they didâ��
“Right, then,” Dugger said. He motioned with his gun. “Say g’bye to the nice lab, mates. We’re moving out.”
Ewan bit down on his mounting panic. “Double time,” he agreed.
Chapter Twenty-eight:
In the Monster’s Lair
By Pat Cunningham
Maureen never saw how she went from the truck to wherever she was now. Somebody pumped gas in the back of the truck and she and her fellow captives passed out. When she awoke she was alone in a bare room with drab walls. No sign of Pete or Atcheson.
The first person, and she used the term loosely, to visit her looked like a mashup of a monster movie scientist and his creation. Bald in some parts, covered in thick, ragged patches of brownish fur in others, he wore the standard mad scientist white lab coat and glasses thicker than her own. One of his forearms was normal; the other was a hairy, meaty slab of twisted muscle that ended in a humongous paw. Like Hellboy. Come to think of it, Hellboy was cuter.
His crooked smile was fully human. Somehow that made it worse.
The smile didn’t last long. “Eh,” he said at first sight of her. “I thought they said they brought in a woman. You won’t do at all. Nice outfit, though.”
Maureen clutched what was left of her battered harem costume more tightly against her nonexistent chest. “Where are my friends?”
“The two louts they caught with you? They’re undergoing processing even as we speak. Your friend with the glasses will be joining my wolf pack shortly. Your blond friend with the anger issues?” He cackled. “I have plans for him. BIG plans.”
This seemed to strike him as funny. He cackled some more.
“As for you â�¦ ” He looked her up and down, and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just watch you. Ever do girl on girl? But first â�¦ “
All of a sudden he lunged at her and grabbed her arm. He jabbed a hypo into her before she could twist away.
The pain and the assault lasted only a moment. Maureen scuttled to a corner and set her back to the wall. She rubbed her arm and watched him warily. Mr. Monster seemed more elated by the blood he’d drawn than he’d been by the rest of her. “Can’t wait to see what’s in here,” he said. “You know what the problem is with women?”
“They don’t like you?”
“All right, besides that. It’s your chemical makeup. Something in you doesn’t play well with my werewolf serum. That’s why I can only make boys. Testosterone gets them over the hump. The ladies just die in agony. I’ve got to figure out a way around that. The boys are getting testy.” He grinned at her and winked.
Maureen wanted to barf.
He left her alone after that, thank God. Some time later two hirsute guards came in and hauled her off to another part of wherever this place was. Her new prison resembled the harem room back at the biker bar in terms of lace and cushions, just with shoddier curtains. And other occupants. Maureen joined a group of eight dull-eyed women in costumes that made her own look like long johns. All were older than she was, and definitely the worse for wear.
“Hey,” their leader said when Maureen was flung into the room. “You must be the new lab rat. I can’t see him touching you. Hope you like girl on girl.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“No chance. We’ve tried. You don’t want to anyway. You don’t know what’s out there. He likes to let the werewolves roam. They’re not big on foreplay. We’re safer locked in here.” The woman grimly pursed her lips. “There used to be ten of us.”
Maureen found a cushion and curled up on it despondently. No way she was staying here. What would Velma do?
Find out all she could, for starters. The women didn’t know much, but they still knew more than she did. Maureen learned the man with the Hellboy hand was Dr. Morloxian. His job was to take captive humans and turn them into mutant monsters for a madman named Damien Hancock. They’d been at a lab some hours from here up until about a week ago. Then there’d been a massive bugout and now they were here. This new prison was smaller than the old one, but smelled a lot nicer and had prettier walls.
They also told her Morloxian was enormous, but in spite of that sucked in the sack. Maureen would have preferred not to know that.
Judging time was iffy in here. She spent it observing the guards’ routines, and studying the lock for pickability. It helped her not think about Ewan, and how badly she wished he would find her.
She was on day two or three when the monstrous scientist himself suddenly burst into the harem room. The women collectively groaned and fixed strained smiles to their faces while trying to jostle each other to the forefront.
“There you are,” Morloxian sang out gleefully. “You beauty. You absolute beauty.” He seized Maureen.
The relief from the others was palpable.
A few of them even waved as he dragged Maureen out the door.
Maureen fought like mad, but he picked her up in his massive wolf arm. Given his muscles versus hers, it wasn’t much of a contest. “I’m not a beauty,” Maureen chattered. “Look. No boobs at all. Just throw me back. I’ll even do girl on girl.”
“You beauty, you beauty,” Morloxian crooned. “Oh, those beautiful genes.”
“And I’m a virgin, so it won’t be any fun for you, and I have this disease, and Iâ��what?”
“You lovely little bitch,” Morloxian said. His ugly, half-wolf face was suffused with bliss. “Little werewolf bitch. All this time you were hiding them from me. Those lovely she-wolf genes.” He beamed a crooked smile at her. “Just enough that there’s a chance you’ll survive the process. You’d better. I’ve already told the boys. You should have heard them howl. You’re going to be the most popular lady in the state. And I won’t have to dig up subjects any more. I can breed my own.”
He started singing to himself. After a moment Maureen recognized the tune: “Who Let the Dogs Out.”
Maureen was not a screamer, or usually a thrasher. She prided herself on using her brains to get herself out of a jam.
Now she thrashed. And screamed.
Chapter Twenty-nine:
Gray (Wolf) Matter
By Pat Cunningham
“I’m sorry, Ewan,” Dante said, and meant it. “We didn’t get to the truck in time. They must have been transferred to another vehicle. I’ve got everyone available looking into it. We’ll find her.” His private cell phone buzzed. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to take this.” Dante turned away. “Still? What’s so fascinating about that place that the Tiger Yakuza would stake it out?”
Dead end. Ewan wanted to bite something. Scratch that; he wanted to grab hold of something and rip it to pieces. Tiny little pieces. He turned to his only other lead, another dead end but who knew? Sometimes the weirdest little things led to something bigger. “Go through it again. Even stuff that doesn’t seem important.”