“Dada!” Patty ran into his arms.
He picked her up despite the pain in his left shoulder. A groan escaped from his lips, but he spun it into a laugh as he raised her in the air. “How’s my girl?” He held her high and buried his face in her belly and blew on it, eliciting a storm of giggles.
Cheryl and Anna came into the dining room.
“Your dinner’s almost ready, Anna,” he said.
Clutching an armful of textbooks, Anna gave him a quizzical look.
“So is ours,” Cheryl said. She wore slacks and a sweater.
Anna kissed Patty. “I’ll see you tomorrow, kiddo.”
“Bye-bye,” Patty said.
“Good night,” Anna said to Mace and Cheryl.
“Good night,” Mace said.
Anna exited, and Cheryl locked the door.
“How was your day?” Cheryl said.
“Rough,” Mace said.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I wish I could have been there.”
“That’s okay.”
She took Patty from his arms. “We had a visitor today.”
“Oh?”
“A certain pseudo journalist.”
Mace frowned. “When was this?”
“Around three o’clock.”
After he came to the squad room. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because it wasn’t necessary. I had Anna send Carl away. I suppose he’s working on another book.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“At least this one will have an ending, even if it can’t possibly include the most important details.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Mace had become so accustomed to keeping information from Cheryl when she was a reporter that he had no trouble doing so now that she wasn’t. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken Marsala.”
“Fantastic. No offense to Anna, but I prefer your cooking. I’m going to take a shower.” He moved down the hall, hoping she didn’t realize he was being evasive.
Eight
Lying on the bare mattress of his cot in solitary confinement, Rodrigo Gomez inhaled when the lightbulb in the ceiling turned dark. For a normal human prisoner, lights-out meant darkness. Gomez wasn’t normal; he wasn’t even human. He was a Wolf, which he had discovered only upon his imprisonment.
On the outside, no one had taught him about his true nature, and the beast raging within him had driven him to the brink of insanity. Many people—like Tony Mace and the journalist Carl Rice and the state prosecutor—believed he had crossed that line, but he knew better. A Wolf who devoured his human victims was not a cannibal but a predator acting on instinct. His years in prison had given him ample time to get in touch with his inner being, and he had made his televised interview with Cheryl Mace his coming-out party.
I am werewolf. Hear me howl.
Cheryl had sat before him, so smug and self-confident, but she didn’t know shit. Neither did Mace or Rice. They claimed to want the truth, but their minds couldn’t accept it. Mace had come to see him here at Sing Sing when the Manhattan Werewolf was loose in the streets of New York City. The cop had sought insight from Gomez, who had been dubbed the Full Moon Killer because he killed when the lunar cycle drove him to do so. Gomez had only begun to suspect his true nature after Mace’s visit. The Manhattan Werewolf—whoever he was—had inspired him to look inward. When other inmates threatened him, he unleashed his fury in drips and drabs: a throat slashing here, a broken neck there. He had found the urge to kill difficult to rein in and wanted nothing more than to gnaw on the innards of his enemies, but he knew discretion was required to enjoy some sort of freedom within the prison’s walls.
Following his interview, Warden Jeff Strand had relocated him to solitary confinement, and three days later had him moved into this old building. Gomez’s cell had a shower and a toilet, and for one hour each day his captors allowed him onto a caged balcony.
Exhaling, Gomez rose in the darkness. He saw every detail in the cell, minus color. He stepped out of his clothes and left them on the floor, then proceeded to stretch his muscles. It was time to bring his time in Sing Sing to a close. He wanted out. Lying on his back on the cold floor, he tipped his head and unleashed a human scream as loud and melancholy as any Wolf’s howl.
Jose Alvarez marched back and forth across the hard floor of the isolated wing of Sing Sing, counting his footsteps to pass the time. The shuttered building had stood empty for years and had just been reactivated to accommodate Rodrigo Gomez because the powers that be decided the inmate needed to be isolated even from those condemned to solitary confinement.
Jose didn’t understand why some nut hollering he was a werewolf posed a threat or why he warranted the Rudolf Hess Spandau Prison treatment, requiring his own detail of corrections officers, but he didn’t mind the assignment. He found it a pleasure to be away from the felons he usually watched. Since the new arrangement had gone into effect, Gomez had proven to be a model prisoner: no babbling, no screaming, no howling.
This was a babysitting job compared to his regular duty, but Jose wasn’t complaining. He made decent overtime and had a great pension plan, and he was halfway to easy street. The only thing that bothered him was the daily commute from the Bronx, but he preferred driving along the Hudson River to riding the subway into Manhattan. He’d take tree-lined scenery over standing shoulder to shoulder with sweaty straphangers any day, even with the cost of gasoline.
Reaching the far end of the corridor, he turned on one heel. A spasm of pain shot through his right knee, and he felt old. His kids, Desi and Ramona, were both in middle school and would be in high school soon, and he had promised his wife, Jackie, that they would move out of the Bronx, maybe someplace close to his job. She wanted to move now, but houses out here were expensive, and if they rented one he knew they would never save enough to own one.
So close . . .
A loud wail came from the only occupied cell in the building.
Oh no, here it comes.
He moved toward the cell. The wailing continued.
At least he isn’t howling.
Jose slid open the hatch in the steel door. “Let me have light in the tank,” he said into the radio clipped to his collar.
Five seconds later the overhead light in Gomez’s cell came on. Jose pulled his black baton free of his belt and leaned close to the hatch.
Gomez’s cot was empty, but the wailing continued.
Squeezing the handle of his baton, Jose leaned even closer to the hatch. Gomez lay nude on his back on the stained concrete floor, his feet aimed at the door and his head at the far wall. He supported himself on one elbow, his face contorted with agony and his body speckled with sweat.
“What’s going on, Gomez?”
“My heart . . .”
Jose’s eyes widened at the sight of Gomez’s chest. Its center expanded as if a fist inside his trunk was trying to punch its way out.
“Hurry . . .”
Jose holstered his baton and spoke into his radio. “Get a medical team in here right away. I think Gomez is having a heart attack.”
“Copy that,” CO Alex McBryde said inside the control room.
“Let me in there.”
“You know that’s against protocol.”
“I see his heart pounding in his chest. There’s no way he’s faking it. Let me in!”
A moment later a clanging sound echoed in the block, and Jose opened the door.
Gomez had been practicing Transformation for two years, ever since the Manhattan Werewolf had inspired him to find the answers to the questions he had been asking: Why am I different from everyone else? Why do I feel like an animal masquerading as a human being?
He had lain awake each night, transforming a different body part: a hand, a foot, a leg, an arm. One night his head, another night his back. All on the cot in his cell, beneath the covers and away from the prying eyes of the guards. When he awoke each morning his muscles burned
with pain, which gave him deep satisfaction. He never pumped iron in the yard, but his physique became more pronounced than those who did.
Now he concentrated on his heart and the muscles around it, causing his chest to expand to an alarming degree.
Jose ran over to him. “Get your feet on the cot.”
Gomez groaned. “It hurts so bad.”
Jose set Rodrigo’s ankles on the cot one at a time, elevating his legs. Then he crouched beside the inmate. “Help is on the way.”
Now.
In the span of seconds, Rodrigo willed his right hand to expand into a claw that he drove into Jose’s face. His elongated index finger pierced the man’s eyeballs while the thumb penetrated the flesh beneath his jaw, then his tongue, and then the roof of his mouth, preventing the man from screaming. A high-pitched whistle came from the corrections officer’s nostrils, followed by blood.
Setting his left hand on the floor for support, Gomez sprang upright and slammed the corrections officer down in his place. Jose dug his fingers into Gomez’s bare arm and kicked at the wall. Gomez raised the corrections officer’s head like a bowling ball and smashed it on the floor with all his strength, splitting the man’s skull. Jose’s hands fell at his sides, and he stopped kicking.
“We have a medical emergency in the old building two,” Alex McBryde said into his radio in the control room. He sat at a console with a live monitor feed of the cell block. “Inmate Gomez appears to be suffering a heart attack. Send a medical team.”
“Copy that,” the dispatcher said.
“No need to hurry,” McBryde said. Screw this scumbag.
The monitor showed a uniformed figure running out of Gomez’s cell.
“What now?”
Jose raced to the steel door below the camera and pounded on it. Blood streaked his face.
“Oh, shit.” Pulling a manual lever, McBryde unlocked the door.
Jose staggered inside, head bowed.
McBryde ran around the console to help him. “What the hell happened?”
Jose turned away from him to close the steel door.
“Are you all right?”
When the CO turned back, McBryde saw the man wasn’t Jose. For a sickening instant, he thought Gomez stood before him. Then the man’s irises expanded, obscuring the whites of his eyes, and as he lunged forward his jaws opened wider than McBryde thought possible. Ferocious canine teeth sank into his face, and McBryde felt hot wet breath on him, followed by blinding pain. The teeth bit through his flesh and muscle, sinking into his cheekbones.
McBryde screamed, and his assailant knocked him to the floor. Claws shredded his torso, splashing his blood. Pain blazed through McBryde’s body, and he tried to wrestle free of the grasp of his attacker. As the raging figure on top of him growled, McBryde felt coarse fur rubbing against his bloody flesh. He pounded at the monster, but it seized his wrists in powerful claws and forced his arms to the floor. McBryde heard a tearing sound, and it wasn’t until the creature sat up and gobbled a large piece of flesh that he realized he no longer had a face.
Gomez swallowed human blood, and it tasted good. Fully transformed, he tore the remains of Jose’s uniform from his powerful frame and opened and closed his fur-covered claws, admiring their awesome beauty. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to give in to his primal urges and wallow in the gore beneath him, but he knew he had only moments to execute the rest of his plan.
With lightning speed, he strode on his hind legs across the control room and opened the door, revealing a long corridor with cinder-block walls. Dropping to all fours, he raced down the corridor, his limbs assuming a more canine configuration. He turned the corner and entered another corridor, his claws scrabbling on the floor. A steel barred door loomed ahead. Gomez hurled himself at one of the bars, and the door flew open. He struck the floor of the old visitors’ entrance, rolled, and galloped for the front doors.
Another leap and he felt cold air on his snout. He landed on a craggy surface outside and ran along the cement between the two old buildings, each four stories high and almost five hundred feet long. Moonlight reflected off the marble surface, and he felt as if he had entered deserted Roman ruins.
He slowed as he reached the end of the buildings. Work lights illuminated the dead grass separating him from the twenty-foot-high prison wall with an octagonal guard tower built into it. The windows in the tower glowed, but it was the full moon that held his attention. He broke into a run, tearing up dirt and grass, and headed straight for the tower.
A corrections officer emerged from the enclosed control room and stood gaping at the railing, then rushed back inside.
By the time the man returned with a Remington 870P shotgun, Gomez had circled around to the left of the tower’s base and leapt halfway up it. He climbed to the top of the wall with ease.
The CO moved along the railing, looking at the yard below, until he stood next to Gomez. When he turned his head in Gomez’s direction, his eyes went wild, and he raised the shotgun to his shoulder. Rodrigo seized the barrel and aimed it at the sky, then dug the claws of his other hand into the man’s throat. The man gurgled blood and fired a blast at the moon, and Gomez sent him screaming to the ground below.
As the searchlight from another tower illuminated the other side of the control room, Gomez tilted his head back and let loose a shuddering howl, then leapt over the wall and plummeted twenty feet to the ground. Landing on the sloped embankment upon which the prison had been built, he sprinted across a paved road onto grass and bolted for the tree line. Shouts rose behind him and a searchlight swept over him, but no shots were fired and he vanished into the brush.
Nine
A cell phone rang in the darkness. Tony Mace stirred in his sleep, but it was Cheryl, lying wide awake, who heard the call. She had suffered insomnia all week, and now she nudged him before the ringing awakened Patty. Cheryl had moved the toddler into bed with them following her abduction.
“Mm?” Tony reached for the cell phone and answered it. With his back to her, Tony stiffened. “What? How? . . . Right, right. Call the Six-Eight and have them send a car to watch my house. I want two men.”
Cheryl sat up.
“No, I want them parked outside my front door where my wife can see them. Give me an hour.” He hung up and turned on the light.
“What is it?” Cheryl said.
Tony rose and switched on the bedside table lamp. He had taken to wearing T-shirts to bed to cover his wounds. His expression was grim. “Gomez escaped from prison half an hour ago. He killed three guards.”
Cheryl’s heart beat faster, but her voice stayed steady. “And where are you going?”
“To Ossining.”
Her journalist’s instincts kicked in. “He’s one of them, isn’t he? Just like he said. You wouldn’t be running off like this if he wasn’t.”
“Yes.”
“Who called?”
“Mint.”
“And he wants you on the scene.”
“I’m the head of the task force. It’s my job.”
“The task force was supposed to stop the Brotherhood of Torquemada. You did that. I thought it was just going to be paperwork now.”
“That was the idea.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to go. If Gomez comes to the city, he could come after me.”
“I’m not leaving until you have protection.” Tony gestured to the bars on the windows. “You’re safe in here, and I taught you to use my .38.”
She got out of bed. Patty stirred but didn’t awaken. “If Gomez is a Wolf, then no two police officers will stop him.”
He moved closer to her. “The bars over the doors and windows will keep him out.”
“He could set the house on fire, burn us out.”
Tony set his hands on her shoulders. His hands felt strong and reassuring. “You’re giving this too much thought. There’s a manhunt for him. He probably won’t make it to the city, and if he does his face will be posted everywhere. We’ll catch him.
”
“Then what? How will you stop him?”
“They’re not indestructible, babe. You saw that. They can be killed. Angela Domini told me Gomez doesn’t even know he’s a Wolf.”
“In my interview, he said otherwise.” She felt guilty for allowing Gomez to use her.
Tony put his arms around her, and she held on to him. Then he went into the bathroom and ran the shower.
Cheryl opened the door, stepped inside the closet, and took down the metal gun case. She set it on the bureau and opened it. Snug in its foam compartment, the .38 gleamed. She picked it up. It felt heavier than it had when Tony had taught her how to handle it. She popped open the cylinder and loaded six bullets into it, then snapped the cylinder shut.
Now what? Was she supposed to carry it in a holster around the house? Patty would love that. She placed the loaded revolver in its compartment, closed the case, and set it on top of Tony’s armoire, where her daughter couldn’t reach it. Then she went into the kitchen and brewed coffee.
Dressed in a black suit, Mace put on his long coat and kissed Cheryl. Sniper circled them wagging his tail.
“Don’t worry,” Mace said. “Everything will be okay.”
“Are you coming back here before you go into the office?”
“I’ll try.” He opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind him, and Cheryl turned the locks. He descended the stairs and opened the glass-paneled inside door.
Before he could step into the vestibule, the apartment door behind him opened. Eduardo Sanchez stood there in flannel pajamas. “Is something wrong? I saw the police car outside.”
Mace hesitated. He didn’t want to worry Eduardo or his family, but he felt they had a right to know. “A felon’s escaped from prison. I have to go to the scene. This criminal isn’t very happy with me or my wife. You should know there’s a slim chance he’ll come here. We all have to take security precautions.”
The Frenzy Wolves Page 6