Wolf's Trap (The Nick Lupo Series Book 1)

by W. D. Gagliani

  Wilbur Klug listened, and when the name of the reservation doctor was mentioned, he smiled.

  Better and better.

  The images he saw in his mind were more than enough to convince him. The cash now and later was the gravy, but the meat looked pretty good, too, nice and edible.

  Oh, yes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lupo

  The moon rises high in the night sky, its halo tinting the treetop edges with a silver-black glow.

  A slight, cold breeze ruffles the uppermost branches of the straight pines and rattles the hardening leaves of the undergrowth below.

  The moon’s glow is dulled by clouds, draping the woods in a white snowlike mantle. The light seems to pulsate while the clouds race from one side of the sky to the other in stop-motion. Beneath the dark trees, the Creature stares upward, entranced by the moon, held prisoner by its power, held prisoner by its presence.

  The Creature’s breath puffs in front of his muzzle.

  A growl escapes the Creature’s throat. Hunger drives him forward, toward the human’s dwelling. There is a fence around the house, and within the fence he smells various animal scents. Pets, any one of which would sate his hunger, have wandered the space between the house and the expanse of chain link, but now the Creature can sense that there is nothing. Even though he is within sight of the dwelling’s entrance, which is lit by a softly glowing globe, the Creature knows there will be no meal here. He will not take a meal in such circumstances.

  About to turn away and follow another path, the Creature stops and sniffs the air. A rustle from behind alerts him to the approach of some small night animal, perhaps a raccoon or badger, or even a fat rabbit, who hasn’t caught his own scent yet. He samples the frigid air carefully and knows it is a rabbit, its fur packed with succulent flesh. The Creature knows there are flying predators around who would take his dinner from him, so he sets off immediately and stalks the hapless morsel. The prey has now frozen in fear, aware of danger but unable to determine its source. The indecision is fatal, for the Creature pounces and soon there is bloody flesh between its pointed jaws, his front paws helping to hold the still-squirming body while dipping his muzzle into the warmth of the rabbit’s stomach and delighting in the delicacies to be found there. Minutes later, his nose wet with warm redness made black by the dim moonlight, the Creature abandons the remains of his feast to the scavengers who wait for their turn in the wings. They are afraid of the Creature, but they have seen him kill before and there is always a meal for them afterward. When the Creature disappears in the darkness of the woods, they will approach and quietly stuff themselves on the leftovers. They will remain subservient to the Creature who comes only at long intervals but whose scent, or some mysterious element in his scent, makes them nervous and skittish.

  The Creature hears their squabbling over the bloody fur and few bones he left behind, but now he heeds only the moon’s call and cannot be bothered with his fellow carnivores. In a few moments, he is running through the night, the cool air caressing his fur and cleansing his whiskers. Though he avoids low-reaching branches with little effort, occasionally leaves brush across his back and rustle above him as he runs headlong into the moonlit night. He is so happy that a joyous howl escapes his throat before he can stifle it, and then a second quick howl. And still he runs, his callused pads treading the fine green needles and the occasional patch of icy snow left born the last fall.

  Another howl escapes him, and somewhere deep in the recess of his brain, the Creature knows that he should control himself. But the running feels so good, and the full stomach, and the blood tang in his throat, that he cannot. And he wonders why these doubts plague him even during the best running, after the best meals. He senses there’s a reason, but instinct overrules these strange feelings. He continues running, stopping only to void his bladder and mark his territory. In the last few hunts he has smelled the scent of a newcomer from a new or foreign pack, a full-grown male who has been lapping the local pet population to fill his belly. The Creature avoids doing so, but lusts for a snout-to-snout meeting with the interloper. It will happen someday, but for now he romps happily and without bothering the humans. He knows there is a reason for not hurting humans, but it’s still locked behind a gauze curtain in his brain. He knows that he’s on the verge of understanding, but can’t worry about it yet.

  For now, there is the pleasure of running free and the fresh blood.

  The moon calls to him, and he answers.

  Sam Waters

  He came awake with a start.

  His heart raced faster than normal. That was his first observation. As if his dreams had been somehow disturbing. Or frightening.

  His arm hurt. Rheumatism, arthritis, whatever it was, the joints hurt as he moved it and laid his fingers across the artery in his neck, taking his pulse. A reflex. Was his heart finally giving up?

  Before he could find the pulse and gauge the situation, he heard the howling again, and he knew without a doubt that it was responsible for his awakening, and perhaps also for his state of heightened anxiety.

  Even as he pondered this fact for a few seconds, another long and plaintive howl echoed through the forest outside his window and drove him deeper under the quilt.

  “Lord God,” he whispered hoarsely.

  It was back.

  A third howl seemed to answer him, and he shivered. It was cold in his bedroom, but not that cold. He knew that fear chilled his heart now, not illness. At least, not yet.

  He gathered up his courage and touched the top of the nightstand for his glasses, finding them in the usual spot. With them perched on his nose, the clock was no longer just a red glow. The numbers coalesced into the time, 1:15 a.m.., mocking him with the blinking colon. Sam half-raised himself and turned toward the frosted window. The register below kicked out warm air and kept the glass pane above both foggy and frosty, depending on the weather outside. A bit of cold wind whistled through the gaps in his old storm windows. The calendar lied; even though it was nearly spring, the weather was pure winter minus some of the snow, which had melted in the January thaw.

  He knew he would have awakened in about an hour anyway, so he might as well get up and see if there was more howling to come. Usually, there would be a howl just before light, as if the animal were saluting the coming day. Or decrying it, whatever.

  “You’re an idiot, Waters,” he said to the darkness. “Just an old fool with childish fears.”

  But Sam Waters knew that he was only trying to fill the room with the comfort of his own voice. He had noticed long ago that there was a pattern to the howling, and therefore to the animal’s presence. And he had fallen asleep with a vague thought on his mind, mindful of the fact that the moon would be full this night.

  He swung his thinning legs from the warmth of the bed and searched with his feet for the sheepskin slippers below. He’d been a barrel of a man, huge and tree-trunk strong in his youth, and he’d acted that way. But now the muscles were softening and every day brought more reminders that his health was something to worry about, not disregard. He hated thinking about it because he’d always been scornful of people who were wrapped up in themselves. But daily aches and pains eventually added up to the point at which he realized why those others complained. Pain really could make you lazy and self-pitying, and he supposed whining, too. Good thing no one but he had to listen to his bleating. Everyone he knew thought he was stoic, but he complained plenty in private.

  Within minutes there was hot tea bubbling into a mug and he had added a few chocolate chip cookies to take the edge off his fear.

  He made his way to the window overlooking the tiny private cemetery, where the love of his life called to him more and more these days and nights. Sarah Waters had been dead almost fifteen years, and in all that time he had promised her that he would face his fear and hunt the monster. It had been his promise from the day the disease had taken his son from him. His son Michael, whose remains now lay beside Sarah’s, had been
killed in the southern part of the state, shortly after infecting a young boy in the city with the disease. Sam never told Sarah that it was he who had followed his son to the city and, to his shame, killed him when he was unable to control him or cure him from the ravages of the disease. The killing of his own son had ruined Sam for life, and he had spent years sulking in fits of guilt. Until the creature had somehow returned to the area, and a grisly murder in Milwaukee had reminded him of how the creature killed. Sam had realized then that the beast he sometimes heard in his woods was the one who had butchered the woman psychologist in the city.

  He suspected that the disease had passed either from his son to the new victim in the city, or somehow to someone else first. He had vowed to himself and Sarah’s memory that he would face that creature one day, but had grown old and tired.

  Lazy you mean.

  Yeah, lazy.

  It had grown easier to let the creature be. Once a month, perhaps nine or ten months a year, Sam could live and let live. Whoever had the disease now was careful never to kill humans. Sam had followed the news, both official and unofficial, with great care. He knew the local journalists and he knew the local medicine men. He had connections in state government, at the Department of Natural Resources and at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Plus, he had friends on the elders’ council. He knew those who dared speak of the creature, and he knew what they thought in private. He had become convinced that whoever carried the horrible disease now was less dangerous than the one who had infected his beloved son.

  But in the last several months, the monster’s kills had become more daring. Instead of wild hares and other animals, people on the res and off had reported losing livestock and pets. Maybe it had been naive to think that the beast, whatever it was, would avoid humans forever. Maybe it was time to fulfill the promise he had made long ago, to his dead son, to himself, and later, to his wife.

  He ate his cookies and drank his tea as he stared outside, seeing through the pines the headstones marking the graves of the two people he treasured most, both of them gone. The disease should be stopped. He had put it off long enough.

  He went to the gun rack and took down the side-by-side, a splendid Beretta, a gift—for he could never have afforded such a weapon—from a long-gone friend. He cradled the sleek stock and caressed it. No, it was much too beautiful. He swapped it for a Remington semi-auto, then loaded the magazine with five shells filled with buckshot from the “special” batch he’d had all these years.

  He didn’t look forward to it, but tomorrow night he would be on the hunt.

  In the meantime, he selected a DVD from his small collection and popped the cap on a Corona—the two vices he allowed himself—and settled down to watch his favorite movie, The Graduate, for the twentieth or thirtieth time. As he lost himself in the Simon and Garfunkel songs, he could not help caressing the Remington’s stock with his gnarled hand.

  He dozed, and remembered. It was all too clear in his mind, how his friend had rejected white man’s society after being let go from yet another job. He remembered how Joseph Badger, a priest and shaman of the Ojibwa tribe, had begun to seethe in his hatred of whites. He had wallowed in despair, but then Joseph chanced upon some European magical texts, some ancient alchemy rituals, and some of the writings of Aleister Crowley, the Beast, who had practiced sex magick and other arcane arts, and a plan for revenge against the whites became his obsession. Sam and other elders had attempted to discourage their distraught friend and respected medicine man from polluting his soul and therefore his medicine, but it was too late.

  One day Joseph’s experiments in native witchcraft rituals, vision quests, and peyote ingesting converged with his dabbling into the European Black Arts and sucked away his soul forever as he altered his body structure and became a massive black wolf. In that form, he would ravage herds and pets and even maul the occasional farmer, taking his revenge out in the warm blood of innocents. Only when drunk and stoned on peyote and various hallucinogens had he confessed to his former friend, Sam Waters, who had then informed the tribal elders and requested a cleansing. Unfortunately, after being banished, Joseph Badger blamed Sam for turning the council against him.

  First he had convinced Sam’s son, Michael, that there was power in his blending of the Old World and the New World magicks, managing to alienate son from father. Then, in the form of a wolf, he had bitten Michael and passed the disease on to him, hoping to start an epidemic that would rid the state of whites. But Sam had done his duty, tracking his old friend and finishing him the way the European werewolves were killed, with silver. The element silver symbolized purity and Joseph had confessed that his experiments proved it was the only metal that could harm such a creature. Though other parts of the mythology had turned out to be inaccurate, Joseph had proven that some characteristics were all too true. Sam had shuddered at the thought of the kind of experiments Joseph had been up to. Eventually, Sam had been forced to track his own son in the city and end his life, but only after he’d apparently already bitten someone. Years passed and he thought the nightmare was over, until some years ago, when the monster returned to the North Woods and that woman psychologist was murdered down south.

  Sam sat up and recalled his years and his losses. He hugged the shotgun close as the movie came to an end. It was a downer, even though it ended with Benjamin getting the girl. You could almost guess that they’d never stay together. That life without their families would be too tough for at least one of them. That their counterculture gesture had been for naught. He always cried at the end of that one, so he chose a different DVD from his stash. Thunderball, another favorite. Out of print. James Bond was one of Sam’s weaknesses. He had read the books, the novelizations, the scripts. He had read about Ian Fleming’s life, Sean Connery’s, Roger Moore’s. You name it and Sam knew it, if it was part of the world of 007. Mindless entertainment, yeah, but it was what he needed right now as dawn approached. He lost himself in the Caribbean setting and slept a little, dreaming of sharks in a tank and wolves in the woods, and a colorful Carnival in which blood gushed from the throats of innocent young men and women.

  When Sam opened his eyes, the sun was well above his roof and it all seemed foolish. Until he went for a walk and found the remains of a butchered rabbit barely a hundred yards from his window.

  Chapter Twenty

  Martin

  Just before the bar closed, Martin staggered outside after saluting his two new friends. Employees. Comrades.

  Whatever.

  He didn’t like beer. Never had. He remembered the yeasty smell and taste of it on his father’s breath and—down there, too, because his father was always interrupting their games to use the bathroom—it triggered more memories he didn’t want. But he could drink it, especially if he was in character. What had he been tonight? He’d actually loosened his tongue a bit too much, telling them not so much that the cop he hated was a werewolf, which would have made them snort with derisive laughter, but that maybe the cop thought he was a magical creature, that he acted like one, and that he should be put down like a rabid dog even if he wasn’t a wolf, dog, mutt, or puppy.

  Martin chuckled as he thought back. Sure, they obviously thought him stupid, and the cop a total wacko, but Wilbur Klug had laughed and said, “I’m gonna get to use them old wolf traps I got rustin’ out in the garage.”

  Dumber than doornails, no doubt, but they were extra guns in a hunt. Now they wanted to bust their friend out of jail. Martin made it clear that if they were caught, he’d never heard of any of them. He was willing to let them bring in their idiot friend, but if they got themselves tagged, he was outta there. He made sure he told them. A dozen times. Finally, Klug had threatened to rip his tongue out with red-hot pincers.

  Martin figured he half meant it, even though he smiled when he said it. His teeth were like fangs but browned by tobacco, coffee, or both.

  Some retainer cash changed hands, and then they’d downed another half-dozen Buds each to seal the deal. The
y stayed behind to plan their mission while Martin headed for his motel bed.

  He squinted in the pale lamp light and he still could barely make out the different shapes in the gravel lot that spread out in a U pattern around the tavern (which, he now realized, itself consisted of a double-wide trailer on a cinder-block foundation with a rough wooden porch wrapped around three sides). All around stood the thick black line of ramrod-straight trees locked in one long rank. Martin looked up and realized with a start that the lamplight was really the full moon, partially hidden behind trees and fast-moving puffy clouds.

  A chill wind swirled through the trees and made them shimmer in his vision, their shadows lengthening and shrinking rhythmically. The rustling through the leaves and needles was loud and eerie, and an owl’s hoot sent a shiver down his spine. He realized that he was the only person outside, and that the tree line was closer to him than he was to the bar. The car wasn’t far, but he suddenly felt stalked. Spied.

  Were those eyes, luminescent eyes, glowing like red coals just over there, in the pitch-black shadows under the pines?

  Before he could reassure himself, a howl echoed through the woods and seemed to reach down into his groin, squeezing his testicles like lemons. His knees shook. He reached for the gun, but then the howl faded away.