Wolf's Tale (Necon Modern Horror Book 25)

Home > Other > Wolf's Tale (Necon Modern Horror Book 25) > Page 19
Wolf's Tale (Necon Modern Horror Book 25) Page 19

by Dan Foley


  Wolf was surprised when Charlotte emerged from the front door less than a minute after her relief arrived. It usually took her longer than that to turnover. “That was fast,” Wolf commented when she got into the truck. Little Wolf immediately climbed onto her shoulder.

  “I cashed out early so we could get to Grandmere’s as soon as possible. I want to talk about what happened today.”

  On the way to Grandmere’s, Wolf asked Charlotte if she had ever seen Little Wolf eat anything. “Come to think of it, I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No. Is that weird?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  “Is it important?”

  “It could be. I should know everything about him and I don’t. What if he gets sick? What if La Pierre knows how to hurt him? I just don’t know.”

  “You should ask your Grandmere. Maybe she knows something,” Charlotte told him as they were pulling up in front of her cabin.

  “I hope you hungry, cause dinner’s almost ready,” Grandmere told them as soon as they walked in.

  “It smells delicious, what is it?” Charlotte asked.

  “We got boiled crawdads to start, an’ then crawdad pie. You ready for that?”

  “You bet,” Charlotte answered.

  “Good. You set on da porch, I’ll bring them out.”

  “These are going to put your lobster to shame,” Charlotte told Wolf as she led him to the porch.

  Wolf stopped to stare when they got out there. The moon was halfway up the night sky, illuminating the bayou in a gentle, silver glow. A single line of reflected brilliance seemed to run from the horizon straight to where they stood. It was as if the world was pointing a finger at them. “This is what I came back for. I forgot how beautiful it could be.”

  Charlotte took his hand and looked out over the bayou with him. “It is beautiful, but I thought you came back for me.”

  “No, but you were the icing on the cake. I was hoping you’d still be here, but I was afraid you’d either be married or gone.”

  Grandmere broke up their romantic moment by coming onto the porch with the boiled crawdads. “I only boiled up a dozen. Da rest are in da pie. That means there are four for each of us.”

  “What about him?” Wolf asked. “Will he eat any?”

  “That boy don’t eat no food. Don’t you know that?”

  “No. Mose never mentioned it. I’ve been wondering about it. What does he eat?”

  “He don’t eat nothin’. That boy is a part of you. He gets his energy from you. That’s why he die if you die. That’s why you lose some of your power if he die. Mose never tell you that?”

  “I guess he did, I just never thought about it that way,” Wolf admitted.

  “Well, nuff talkin’, let’s eat,” Grandmere told them as she twisted the tail off one of the crawdads. Then she sucked the fat out of the head before peeling the shell off the tail and popping it in her mouth.

  Wolf twisted the tail off his crawdad, peeled it, and popped it into his mouth expecting it to be just like the one Charlotte had fed him earlier. It wasn’t. That one had been cold and sweet. This one was warm and had a kick to it. “Whoa, what did you do to these?”

  “Just a little Cajun spice. That okay with you?”

  “Of course, I just wasn’t ready for it.”

  “They don’t spice that lobster you eat up there?”

  “No, we boil it and dip it in drawn butter.”

  “Well that’s just foolish. I’ll never understand them Yankees.”

  “No, it’s really good. It’s just different.”

  “Fine, now tell me what happened today.”

  “Buster Hardy told me La Pierre drives a ’62 Cadillac.”

  “He just told you that?”

  “Not right away. At first he said he had never heard of her.”

  “Then how you get him to tell you ‘bout her car?”

  “I didn’t, Little Wolf did.”

  “Good. That make sense.”

  “Then Billy Bodie told us she lives down in Lavern.”

  “He make Billy tell you that, too?” Grandmere asked, nodding her head at the familiar.

  “No,” Charlotte laughed, “I did. I told him I was pregnant and we heard that La Pierre could help with that.”

  Grandmere frowned at them. “That right, you pregnant?”

  Charlotte laughed harder at that. “God no, I was just having a little fun with Billy. He’s been trying to date me since I got divorced. No matter how many times I turn him down, he keeps trying. It just came out. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Okay then, that all right. What else you find out?”

  “Not much. We drove through Lavern but didn’t really have time to look around. On the way back we stopped when Charlotte saw a sign for crawdads. You tell her the rest,” Wolf said, nodding to Charlotte.

  “She was very friendly until I asked about Renee La Pierre. It was like I had suddenly turned into some kind of monster. The woman panicked, swore she had no idea who I was talking about. But then she ran and hid in the shack she had there by the bayou.”

  “That not good. That witch been out talkin’ ‘bout you. No one down there gonna help you now. They be too scared, that for sure. What you goin’ to do now?”

  “Tomorrow we’re going back to Lavern to look for her.”

  “Well, that be good for tomorrow. But now that pie ready. It goin’ to beat any lobster you ever ate.”

  Wolf had just finished his last tail and was thinking how good a beer would taste. Right now he thought giving up beer was one of the worst things about having this power. The crawdad pie only made the feeling worse. Good Cajun food deserved a cold beer.

  While Wolf was sitting outside the Seven-Eleven, Renee La Pierre was making plans for how to deal with him. His weak spot was going to be his woman ... or his grandmere. “What do you think, my pet? Should we go for the woman first?”

  The familiar grinned and chittered her agreement. To anyone else, the grin would have been frightening. To the witch, it was comforting.

  “You cannot bite her. That will be for later. For now we just want to get her away from Lobo and bring her back here. Once we have her, the boy will do anything to get her back, the fool. That’s the problem with loving someone. They make you weak. We never had that problem, did we my pet?”

  Once again the familiar chittered and grinned. There were three dead husbands who could testify to that. Two of them were buried in the back yard.

  14 – First Blood

  “You sure you want to take the Torino today? We’re going to stick out like a sore thumb in this.”

  “That’s exactly what I want. I want La Pierre to know I’m looking for her. I want people talking. I want them to know that I’m not afraid of her and that there’s a new power in the delta.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want, let’s do it,” Charlotte agreed.

  When Wolf turned the key in the ignition, the 390 cubic inch, V8 motor roared to life. Wolf had wanted a 427 or 428 cubic inch motor but they didn’t have one at the dealership and he hadn’t been willing to wait for them to order one, so he had settled for the 390.

  Once he was off the oyster shells of the side road, and onto the paved main road, Wolf punched it. Smoke came from the back wheels as the Torino laid down a strip of rubber. When he power shifted into second he got another squeal from the tires and left more rubber on the road.

  “Is that necessary?” Charlotte asked over the sound of the wind blowing by the open windows.”

  “No, but it’s fun. And it’s going to draw a hell of a lot of attention once we get to Lavern.”

  “Look at that. The crawdad shack is closed.” The day before the shack had looked like an open air hodgepodge of wooden tables filled with bags of boiled peanuts and a few bins of locally grown vegetables. Today, sheets of hinged plywood had been dropped down from the ceiling and the thing was nothing more than a locked
wooden box.

  “Well, we won’t be getting any information out of her,” Wolf said when he saw it.

  Charlotte looked disappointed as they drove by. “Or crawdads. I really wanted more crawdads.”

  They drove all over Lavern, stopping at every business they could find. Some people locked their doors when they saw the Torino pull in. At the places they did get to talk to someone, no one would admit to knowing anything about La Pierre.

  “We’re done here,” Wolf said when they reached the end of Lavern. “Let’s go back home, get my pickup, have some lunch and then I’ll take you to work.”

  When Wolf pulled the Torino into Buster’s, his pickup was sitting out front with the keys in the ignition. Buster was nowhere to be seen and the garage was shut and locked. “I guess we put the fear the God in him, didn’t we?”

  Charlotte looked at the pickup and shuddered. “Not the fear of God. But you put a scare in him, that’s for sure. Would you really have let Little Wolf bite him?”

  “Of course not, but he didn’t know that.” What he didn’t say was that allowing his familiar to bite someone was a line he didn’t want to cross. Little Wolf might have bitten asshole number two, but he had done that on his own to protect Charlotte. Could he let him do it again to protect her? Probably, but he didn’t want to find out.

  “You going to be okay riding in that?”

  Charlotte didn’t answer; she just got out and waited for Wolf to park the Torino behind the garage where it couldn’t be seen from the road. She was standing in the same spot, staring at the truck when he came back around to the front. “We don’t have to do this you know,” he told her.

  “Yes, we do. She’s seen the Torino and my pickup. She hasn’t seen this. Just tell me one more time that the ghost is gone.”

  “He’s gone.” Then Wolf squeezed her hand and went around to the driver’s side. He was about to get in when he remembered something. “Hang on, I need to get the shotgun out of the Torino.”

  “Do you really need it?”

  “Probably not, but I don’t want to leave it in the car. It’s too easy to steal.” He was back a minute later with the gun cradled in his left elbow.

  When he got back, Charlotte was talking to Little Wolf. “It’s okay, he’ll tell me if something’s wrong,” she told him, referring to Little Wolf who was now sitting in his preferred perch on her shoulder. But she still hesitated when Wolf opened the door for her. “You first. I’ll follow.”

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” he answered and went around to the driver’s side again. Once Wolf was in, Little Wolf jumped on to the passenger seat and Charlotte climbed in after him. She didn’t say a word on the way to work, and Wolf could tell she was relieved to climb out once they got there.

  Renee La Pointe’s phone had been ringing off the wall all afternoon. They were all scared. Some sounded as if they were on the verge of crying, some of them were. Everyone calling her had the same message: the man in the red car was driving all over town asking about her. Some of them said he had a woman and a creature like hers with him.

  “What the hell does he think he’s doing? This is my town. He can’t come into my town and show off to my people. I’m going to go up there and put an end to this.”

  Her familiar shared her anger. It was hissing and growling, whipping its tail around and digging its claws into the floor. “Yes my pet. You’ll get your chance too. Are you ready?”

  For an answer, the creature ran to the door and waited for her to open it. It rushed out when she did and was waiting at the car when she caught up to it. Within minutes they were on the road to Bayou La Pointe. She needed to calm herself. She could not let her anger consume her when she faced the boy. But every time she started to get on top of it, thoughts of what he and the woman had done fanned the rage threatening to overcome her. It was fate or coincidence that had her driving past the Seven-Eleven while Wolf was inside using the rest room. She checked the parking lot, but neither Lobo’s red fastback, nor the woman’s pickup was parked there. Good, maybe they were at the house.

  La Pierre slowed when she approached the road the woman’s house was on. She checked for cars coming in either direction. When she was sure the road was empty, she turned off the headlights and turned in. She was pleased to see that there were lights on in the house.

  The witch considered parking and walking up to the house, but realized that if Lobo or the woman was out, and then came back, she could be separated from her only means of escape, her car. Rather than risking that, she slowly drove the two hundred yards to the house, inching along in order to make as little noise as possible.

  When she got a bit closer, she could see there was only one vehicle in the drive — the woman’s truck. Lobo’s fancy red car was missing. There were lights on the house, to be sure, but there was no other sign that anyone was in there. After twenty minutes of sitting in the dark, La Pierre decided to get a closer look.

  She cautiously circled the house, looking into every window. Her familiar followed at her heels. When they were done, the witch was sure the house was empty. This time she decided to go in. She broke a window on the back door, reached through the opening and unlocked it. In her rush to get inside, she never noticed that she had cut her hand on a piece of glass left on the frame. That would come later, and it would both infuriate and terrify her.

  Once inside, she looked for anything she could use against Lobo or the woman. She checked the bathroom hoping to find blood on a tissue or tampon. She checked the bed sheets, but except for some stains that might be semen, they were clean. Even her familiar could not find a trace of either Lobo’s, or the woman’s blood. She took some of the woman’s clothes and one of Lobo’s shirts just to make them wonder why she wanted them.

  In the living room, she overturned furniture and broke the one table light that was there. The kitchen fared no better. When Lobo and the woman came home they would be greeted by broken dishes and spoiled food.

  “Let’s go, we’re done here,” she told her familiar. They left by the front door, which they left open.

  She was feeling better after trashing the woman’s home, but her anger was still boiling beneath the surface as she approached the Seven-Eleven. The pickup that had been there earlier was still parked on the side of the building, so she assumed it belonged to whoever was working tonight. It was impulse and her lingering anger more than anything else that made her pull in and stop. She and her familiar were out of the car and heading toward the door when she heard someone yell her name — La Pierre! She turned ... and Lobo was getting out of the pickup.

  Wolf couldn’t believe it when the big, black Cadillac pulled into the Seven-Eleven. “Son-of-a-bitch, is that La Pierre?” he asked Little Wolf.

  When the witch and her familiar emerged from the car, Little Wolf went wild. It was her. “Hang on,” he told the creature as he reached for the shotgun. He might not shoot La Pierre, but her familiar was a different story. He’d kill it if he could. They were half way to the door when he climbed out of the pickup and called her name.

  The woman might have been shocked to see him, but she reacted faster than he would have thought possible. “Come,” she yelled and bolted toward her car. Wolf didn’t have time to bring the shotgun to his shoulder and aim, so he squeezed a shot off from the hip. Pellets banged off the side of the Cadillac, but he thought he hit the familiar before it managed to slip behind the front of the car. He was breaking the gun down to reload when he heard the Cadillac roar to life. He could only stand and stare at it as it pulled out of the lot and sped off south. Wolf breathed a sigh of relief until he thought of his Grandmere. “Shit! Go to Charlotte,” he yelled to Little Wolf, then spun to run back to the pickup.

  By the time he was on the road, La Pierre’s tail lights were disappearing in the distance. Wolf floored the gas, but had no chance of catching the Cadillac with its 325 horse power motor. He only went as far as Grandmere’s to make sure the witch didn’t stop there
. As soon as he reached the cabin and saw that La Pierre hadn’t, he did a quick K-turn and sped back to Charlotte.

  Charlotte and Little Wolf were standing outside the front door when Wolf got back. “What the hell happened? I heard a shotgun go off right outside and then he was banging on the door to get in.”

  “It was La Pierre and her familiar. She was right here, on their way in when I yelled at her. She ran back to her car. I only managed to get one shot off before she reached it. I think I might have hit her familiar.”

  “You must have. He’s been going nuts out here, sniffing and scratching the ground.”

  Wolf looked at his familiar and saw something glinting off his face in the light from the store. A closer look confirmed that it was blood.

  “Well done, Wolf. Does that mean you’ll be able to find her familiar now?” The little guy grinned back at him, chittering like mad. He obviously wanted to go after La Pierre and her familiar.

  “Don’t worry, now that you can find them, our time will come. Right now we have to stay with Charlotte.”

  “What about Grandmere?” Charlotte asked. “Is she safe?”

  “I think so. I think La Pierre and her familiar will be licking their wounds, at least for tonight. We can check on her after you get off, and then see what happens tomorrow.”

  For the rest of the night, Wolf parked right outside of the front door facing the road. The loaded shotgun was on the seat between him and Little Wolf. Both windows were open so the familiar could exit fast if he needed to. Wolf wasn’t worried about La Pierre, but he wasn’t convinced she didn’t have other resources like Bubba available.

  The rest of the night was uneventful until they went home. “What the hell,” Charlotte swore when they turned onto their road. “The front doors open. We didn’t leave it open.”

  “No we didn’t,” Wolf agreed. “La Pierre must have been here too.”

 

‹ Prev