Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series)

by W. D. Gagliani

  Details…

  The woman’s body size was wrong, he saw now, and her hair wasn’t exactly the right shade of chestnut, even though it was dark. She was more petite than Jessie’s tall, athletic and muscular body.

  “Christ, oh Christ,” he muttered as he reached her and gently lifted the top front of her bent-over body and pushed her back onto the target. The hair parted and he saw her face clearly for the first time.

  “Ashley!”

  Relief flooded through his body like a hot, liquid wave. It met the frozen liquid in his veins and made him unsteady on his feet. He shifted and felt bits of sharp debris under his soles but there was no pain, for he was completely oblivious to everything around him except the woman in front of him.

  Ashley Johnson, local television reporter.

  Who was apparently out cold, but unhurt as far as he could tell.

  Ashley Johnson. Not Jessie. Not Jess…

  He half-turned when he saw a flicker beside him. The ghostly figure was coalescing there, just another reason to question his own mindset. He shrugged. Time for that later.

  He manipulated the manacles, found they didn’t need a key, and released Ashley. She fell into his arms and he caught her, her slight form almost child-like in his grasp.

  She groaned softly as he tried to turn away from the archery target and lay her down on the broken concrete floor, sweeping a small patch with a naked foot. As he stretched her out gently, he looked for wounds but didn’t see any. He crouched over her, unmindful of his condition.

  Her eyes fluttered. Found his.

  Widened.

  PREY

  “Jesus,” she gasped as her vision cleared. “Jesus, I’m still alive…”

  She wondered if it was even true, because she felt suddenly immeasurably weak. As if she was fading into the distance.

  “Nick?”

  Her gaze wrestled with the familiar face. Nick Lupo, homicide cop. Her friend on the MPD, they’d formed a cooperative bond on numerous capital cases. Nick Lupo, hunched over, staring into her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, to thank him, to cry. She half-coughed as she tried to speak.

  But then she noticed he was… naked.

  Could it be him? Was she seeing things?

  Am I hurt?

  Why is Nick naked? And… excited?

  Her eyes widened as she looked at him and he noticed. He grimaced. “It’s a long story, best not to ask. Are you all right? Did he—?”

  “Ah,” she half-groaned, regaining her voice now. “No, I don’t think he had time. But he was about to… he was going to…” She shook her head. “And then there was this animal. Dog, monster dog. It was huge. It came in and ripped the guy apart.”

  She stopped and tilted her head so she could look past the big cop at The Archer where he lay.

  “Lupo!” she said abruptly, tearing herself away from the comfort of his arms. “We have to help him! Keep him alive…”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s my big story. If he croaks nobody will know what the hell was driving him to kill.”

  “He almost killed you,” Nick the cop pointed out.

  She was distracted by his nakedness, entirely obvious as he crouched over her. “Have to try, Nick. You can arrest him, but I have to try and question him.”

  “You mean interview,” Lupo said, frowning.

  “Whatever.” She struggled. “Help me up. And, Lupo, get some clothes on!”

  She didn’t wait for his answer, but continued trying to get to her feet, starting with getting to her knees. She was a journalist, she couldn’t avoid trying to interview the man who had almost managed to kill her, especially if he was dying.

  The people need closure.

  I need a great scoop, too.

  She looked around. “Where the fuck are we, anyway?”

  Lupo grinned humorlessly. “Couple blocks from the casino. Guy’s a real jokester.”

  She managed to wobble to her feet with Lupo’s steady arm to grasp. She couldn’t help checking him out again, the large-framed and well-muscled body, the powerful thighs, the surprisingly gentle hands. She checked his groin without too much shame and wasn’t disappointed. If he was embarrassed, he didn’t show it, though he seemed annoyed at her gaze. He had nothing to be embarrassed about, she thought.

  Shaking her head to get herself back on track, she pulled reluctantly away from his grip as he helped steady her. Couple blocks, eh? Maybe it’s possible. She went to kneel near the man who had been The Archer, only stumbling once. He was a mess and she couldn’t help flinching. He writhed, muttering and crying, now much less frightening than when he had held the key to her life and death. He was rather unimpressive, really, not much of a super-villain at all.

  She checked him quickly, but the blood was pouring from several serious wounds, including the stump of his arm. She was no doctor, unlike that friend of Lupo’s. But she could spot the signs. The Archer was dying. The mauling was even worse than it looked.

  She wondered about that dog – maybe some kind of a roving guard dog? And where had it disappeared to? Did Lupo see what had gone down?

  And why the hell is he naked?

  The Archer’s eyes fixed on hers as if pleading for help. She wanted to touch him, to reassure him in a weird way, but she remembered very well how vicious he had been only minutes before. And she wanted him to talk to her. Strength was returning quickly, and with it her instincts. She nodded. “Hold on, we’ll get help. Tell me why. Why did you want to kill these people?”

  As she spoke to him, she got busy. She managed to rip a relatively unbloodied section of his tattered shirt, and made a barely usable tourniquet for his mauled arm, results of a long-ago first-aid course. It would slow the bleeding if nothing else.

  “This is it,” she said as she continued, “your chance to speak to the world. Why were you driven to kill? Were they strangers? Why did you kidnap me? What’s your message? What was your point in all this bloodshed? And why the crossbow?”

  But his ragged breathing hampered his speech, and even though he held her gaze with feverish eyes, life seemed to be ebbing from his features.

  Damn it, if I had my recorder. A camera guy.

  She stood. The naked cop had edged closer, towering over her and the dying murderer, a strange expression on his face. “Lupo, I have to go try and get him some help – and a camera. You’re in no shape…” So to speak.

  “Ashley—” he began, but she grabbed him.

  “Listen to me, Lupo! One of us needs to get this guy some help before he dies. That stray dog really did a number on him. I want him on camera if I can manage, but if I don’t get him some help it’s over. You can, huh, guard him until everybody shows up. Anyway, I don’t know what happened, but you’re – well, you’re naked, for one thing.”

  Lupo nodded. “All right, you go.”

  She shrugged and started to move, then stopped. She thought she saw something move in his eyes. They seemed to be flicking through a color wheel, rolling in a weird and impossible way. It had to be the light. She’d always liked the big cop’s expressive eyes. They could be soft and sensitive, his eyes, and she’d always kind of hoped he would see her, really see her… but now his eyes were cold and distant. They weren’t moving after all. A trick of the light.

  “Watch over him?”

  “I’ll read him his rights. You’d better go, or it’ll be moot,” he said, glancing at the wounded, wheezing wreck nearby.

  She pleaded with her eyes. “Keep him alive.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  She gathered her breath, took stock of all the aches and pains from her harrowing experience, then found her way out of the warehouse. Outside, she stood to get her bearings. Lupo was right, this is really close. That asshole! Then she headed for the bright glow of the casino building at a run, staggering a little over the crumbling concrete.

  LUPO

  He hated outright lying to Ashley, even though she was a reporter and technically the en
emy. But there was a good chance this Archer guy would turn into a werewolf if he survived Lupo’s bite. Wasn’t his duty – especially as a cop – to the greater good?

  And hadn’t he just made a similar decision recently?

  Explaining this one might be much more difficult than the motorcycle gangbanger and jewelry store robber had been. In his mind, that one had been more clear-cut. Here, he was constrained by events. Ashley would be back soon with an ambulance. He only had minutes, at best.

  Ghost Sam put in his two cents: “You know what you have to do, Nick.”

  Lupo snorted.

  But real or not, the ghost was right.

  Lupo approached the guy, whose body was trembling but who was staring at him as if shell-shocked. It wouldn’t take much, seeing how the Creature’s first attack had almost done the job right there. The guy was lying there, shivering, rheumy eyes fixed on his, a look as unfathomable as the ocean. But there was some smugness there, too. Lupo began to visualize his own change, the first step to bringing the Creature to the fore, making the change, and throwing out the trash here. But again, before he could continue, he heard Sam’s voice. “Ah, Nick? Wait!”

  Lupo swore. Aren’t ghosts usually voiceless? He would have given anything for some good, old-fashioned chain-rattling and howling. He shrugged.

  And then a further scraping sound behind him made him freeze.

  A voice behind him cried out: “What the fuck?”

  It was Charlie Black Bear, frozen in a two-handed stance in the doorway, his face screwed up in an expression of bewildered surprise. The extended Glock wavered in his grip.

  Shit.

  “What’s going on here? Lupo?”

  “Let me explain,” Lupo said, painfully aware that he was buck naked and standing over a badly wounded suspect. And now there was no Sam anywhere.

  Was Charlie alone, or had he brought the cavalry?

  “Uh…” Charlie said, his eyes back and forth between Lupo and The Archer. “Okay. Explain.”

  THE ARCHER

  The pain from his mauled, ruined arm had abated but his crushed chest was making him crazed, but he knew it was the hot leaking from his torn throat – which he could no longer feel – that was killing him.

  Goddamn it, he kept saying to himself. Goddamn it.

  He knew The Archer was done. Finished.

  But he had no idea what he had seen. The big cop that hulked over him now had been a wolf, he knew it was impossible, like something out of a cheap straight-to-video movie, but he was sure he hadn’t been hallucinating. His attacker was a wolf, he knew it instinctively – it had been a wolf and then it had somehow turned into a human. Whatever he had seen, all he knew was that he was dying and he wanted to go out with one last kill. But the naked cop – yeah, the bastard was naked, maybe he’d hallucinated after all – was approaching with murder in his bizarro swirling eyes.

  A scraping sound distracted the cop, who whirled – and then a deep voice shouted out in startled surprise. With a supreme effort in which he ignored every bit of the screaming pain generated by his grotesque wounds, the Archer managed to reach for his crossbow, which still lay nearby.

  He had no strength left in him. He was laying in an awkward position and didn’t have the right angle to fire his one bolt at the naked guy, the guy who had been a wolf.

  But he was able to aim right at the new guy, a big Indian dressed in all black that he remembered from the casino. This was the bruiser who ran security and the casino cops. He had a gun in his hand, but he seemed to be staring at the naked cop, and now they were talking but the voices came in and out for The Archer, who felt his hold on life starting to slip away.

  There was a strange heat spreading through his system, jabbing like a needle into his soft organ tissue. Death claiming him, inch by inch, cut by cut.

  Slowly, maybe in slow-motion, he steadied the crossbow on the floor and with the last bit of his strength squeezed the trigger.

  The bolt flew, straight and true.

  He was an expert, after all.

  The effort was too much and the crossbow slid from his hand and clattered to the concrete.

  LUPO

  He saw it tear through the air next to him like a miniature javelin. He thought he felt the ripple of its passage, heard its ominously quiet whistle.

  And Charlie Black Bear grunted, flying backward in a half-spiral, his pistol spinning out of his hand, a sheet of blood cascading to the floor from the side of his leg.

  The cascade didn’t stop, it became a gush.

  “Christ!” Lupo blurted out as he ran toward where the big man had collapsed.

  Femoral artery.

  By the time he got there, Charlie’s eyes were already starting to glaze and a deep red pool was spreading under him.

  “Looks like you’re not gonna get to tell me the story, Lupo. Too bad…”

  His voice faded.

  Lupo grasped the big man’s belt and undid the buckle as quickly as he could, yanked it through the loops like a whip, and wound it around the muscular thigh not far from where the bolt protruded obscenely. Removing the bolt would likely kill Charlie, he knew that, so he left it in place and tightened the belt as much as possible. He slapped Charlie a couple times.

  “Wake up, man, stay with me…”

  “Ahhh, do I have to?”

  “Yeah, I’d say you do. Come on!” Another slap and Charlie’s eyes fluttered. But the bleeding had slowed. The tourniquet was working. Maybe the bolt had just nicked the artery, and he wasn’t on the verge of bleeding out after all.

  Then again…

  Charlie’s head lolled to the side. Lupo felt his wrist and was relieved. The big man had passed out, but his pulse wasn’t as weak as he’d expected. If Ashley brought them all back with her soon, Charlie would be all right. But The Archer, on the other hand…

  The growl was up Lupo’s throat and out of his mouth before he could suppress it. His hands were itching insanely and fur sprouted along his arms and back, his neck, and his thighs. His rage was making the Creature manifest, coming to the surface of Lupo’s psyche and realigning his DNA without Lupo’s intent, like a reflex. He felt his eyes harden and narrow into those of the wolf, he felt his muscles lengthen in that magical fluid way, and his nostrils swelled with the heavy scent of fresh spilled blood, the aroma of torn flesh and broken bones spilling their marrow.

  He checked with a quick glance. Charlie Black Bear was fully out of it right now.

  Lupo growled and managed to cut off a howl the Creature wanted to let loose. His head was now transitioning into the wolf’s snout and he barely had a chance to lope toward the prone form of the wounded murderer before he became the oversized black wolf again.

  His monstrous forepaws grasped The Archer, shook him, and crushed his chest in three quick motions.

  The Archer awoke and screeched in terror and pain, his eyes bulging as if about to burst from their sockets, his mouth open in mid-scream and what seemed to be full insanity.

  This isn’t only for Ashley, but also for Detective Herb Stanley, a good cop. And for making me think you had Jessie, you bastard.

  Lupo’s narrow wolf-eyes stared into the asshole’s face as he calmly opened the Creature’s jaws and tore out The Archer’s throat in one savage shake of his massive head.

  The screaming died in a gurgle as blood exploded in a cloud the wolf started lapping up like thick red milk as it spread over the gore-covered corpse.

  Even inside the Creature, Lupo could sense the moment it happened. The Archer was no more.

  And he wouldn’t rise as a wolf with the next full moon, either. He was nothing now, a wrecked vessel.

  Nick Lupo didn’t let the wolf have his fill. There wasn’t much time, and he had to regain control of the Creature despite its bloodlust. He realized that if he let the Creature have its head, then both the Archer and the Indian would be dead. The Archer he didn’t give a shit about, but the Indian… well, he didn’t deserve to die.

  H
e visualized himself slipping back into human form again, and felt the strange tingle of the realigning DNA, the split-second dizziness. And then he stood naked again over the dead Archer, staring at the grisly mortal wound. The killer’s wide-open dead eyes were somehow cold and understanding, however, and they creeped out even the experienced cop. The heavy smell of spilled blood clogged his nostrils and kept the coarse hair stiff on various parts of his skin.

  And the result of the Creature’s interrupted blood-frenzy was an involuntary stiffness elsewhere.

  Charlie picked that moment to come back, if weakly. “Fuck… what just happened?”

  Lupo turned to face the big man where he lay. “You almost bled out, Charlie. Hang on. Our friend Ashley’s bringing help…” He neglected to say the help was for the departed Archer. Who gives a shit about her disappointment?

  “You – you got here in time?” Charlie said, but he was sagging again.

  “Yes, and you did too. But it wasn’t Jessie he had. I don’t know what’s up with her—”

  “We found her, Lupo, she’s okay.” He groaned a little and shook his head. “She was in a corner, gambling away like nothin’…”

  “Gambling?” Jessie?

  Charlie nodded. “What’s the deal here? What went down?”

  “We thought it was… my Jessie. But it turned out to be Ashley Johnson. He was going to use her for target practice.” He tilted his head at the colorful round target.

  “Fuck me,” Charlie said softly. “But you got her first?”

  Lupo nodded. Then he added, “Yes,” because Charlie’s eyes were closing.

  After a beat, the eyes opened and fixed Lupo’s with a stronger gaze than his body seemed to indicate he could manage. “And the Archer dude? What about him?”

  “He’s… gone.”

  Charlie smiled. “Good, save the takshpayers some money…”

  Lupo smiled. “Hey Charlie…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember anything?”

  There was a long pause. “I do, I think... You’re naked, which is shtrange. Or I’m hallucinating. They told me you might do something… shtrange.” He was starting to slur his words. “They were right. Hey, you’re alsho—”