by Hunter Blain
Doctor Caracas felt the change in the air, and his eyes shot up while his body instinctively recoiled against his seat.
“But that’s not all I did,” Jose announced from between gritted teeth. “I also ate the flesh of an old man. Oh, and dismembered a group of pendejos.”
“Y-yes,” the doctor said as he shifted uncomfortably in his metal chair. “W-w-why did you, ah, eat, the man’s arm?” Jose had to give it to the doctor for maintaining such control over his fear. He was a coward, but the nagging notion that he had to know the answers kept him going.
“I was hungry,” Jose said with a wry smile as he tilted his head down while keeping his eyes locked on the man, much like a predator preparing to strike. The doctor could almost swear that there was a yellow tinge to his eyes.
“Officer, um,” he looked down at his file, his fingers trembling slightly, “Aguirre says he shot you in the chest. We showed him your mug shot and he confirmed it was you. He even had some of your blood on him. But you don’t, ah, you don’t have a gunshot wound.”
“Didn’t much care for it, so I got rid of it.”
“Ar-are you, um, saying that you healed a gunshot wound in less than twenty-four hours?”
“Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. What’s it worth to ya, Doc?” Jose was a passenger in his own mind, watching as words that he normally would never say spilled out of his mouth. It felt . . . good.
“If that is the case,” the doc began, gaining confidence as if he had found a kink in his opponent’s armor, “then why hasn’t your face healed?”
The image of Isabel slashing his face with the silver brooch flashed in his mind again, dropping an atomic bomb in his core that sent a mushroom cloud of hate throughout his entire body. A growl rumbled like rolling thunder as eyes shifted yellow.
“Guard!” the good doctor cried out with a cracking voice much higher than any man should be able to make.
The door burst open and Officer Gonzalez reemerged, a scowl etched into his face and a baton in hand.
Jose began to pivot his head on a neck that had begun to creak as if slowly being moved by a chiropractor. His entire vascular system waged war against the sheets of skin containing it, and it started pressing against its captor with unnatural vigor. Rasping breaths through clenched teeth sent spittle spilling down his quivering chin. Eyes that seemed to be the size of cue balls bulged as a road map of red capillaries wound its way to the yellow irises.
“Por Dios,” the low-level headshrinker whispered while making the sign of the cross over his chest.
“God’s not here,” Jose growled with a voice that rumbled with inhuman vocal cords. “But I am.”
Bones popped. Tendons stretched. Hair sprouted with a voracious appetite to consume every inch of skin. A howl of pain interlaced with anticipation erupted as Jose’s face elongated. Fangs grew from human teeth while pupils turned to slits in their yellow housing.
A leather restraint snapped from the uncontainable girth of the growing monster. Officer Gonzalez snapped out of his paralysis and sent an overload of electrical signals to his frozen muscles. He rushed forward and grabbed at the leather restraint while putting the metal baton in the werewolf’s mouth in an effort to keep him from locking his jaws on tender flesh.
The wolf pressed against the man’s chest with a paw and closed his powerful jaws, snapping the metal rod into pieces. Officer Gonzalez fell backward, hit his hip on the table, and tumbled to the ground in a sprawl. Two more snaps sounded behind him as he tried to get to his wobbly feet.
“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening,” Officer Gonzalez repeated over and over to himself in a mantra of failing self-preservation. In that instant, he placed all his existential hope in the last remaining leather restrai—
Snap.
The officer froze in a crouch, his breath trembling and his brow damp. Though he knew it was a terrible notion, the urge to look over his shoulder at what was behind him was irresistible, and it sealed his fate.
The wolf crashed into his back like a Mac truck and sank dripping fangs into the exposed half of the man’s defenseless face. The other half was squished under the intense pressure of the wolf’s added weight. His vision blurred as his skin grew tight. His head was lifted off the ground before something tore and his left cheek slammed onto the tile. For the briefest of moments, Officer Gonzalez thought someone had popped him on the right side of his face with a thick rubber band that had been pulled to its maximum length. Then his mind dispelled the illusion and accepted what was happening.
The wolf pressed on the man’s back with one massive paw and swallowed the half of the officer’s face he had rent off with a nauseating slurp. Officer Gonzalez screamed in a crescendo while clawing at the tile floor with hands that seemed to move on their own volition rather than in the synchronistic method of a sane mind. A pool of blood spread under the man, creating crimson drag marks as his hands frantically slipped in his effort to escape. Some blood got into his mouth, and reflex took control to shut his mouth. But there were no lips left, only red teeth and oozing muscle.
The heavy paw rose off the officer’s back, who flipped over in an effort to use his frantically kicking feet to crab-walk away.
The wolf wrapped his jaws around the officer’s forehead. Fangs scraped sickeningly across bone as the rest of the man’s flesh was torn free.
Doctor Caracas, who stood frozen against the far wall with his arms outstretched, watched as a shrieking crimson skull was freed from a vault of flesh. Only eyes flicking desperately in their sockets and a few strands of tendons attached to a flapping jaw remained. The falsetto of shrieks began to falter like a siren in the distance as panicked eyes waned into an unfocused stillness.
Fangs wrapped around a throat that bobbed up and down before piercing the flesh as easily as a fork through fresh pasta. With a swift jerk of the head, the contents of Officer Gonzalez’ neck were torn free and chewed with gusto.
A weak, twitching hand rose to rest on the wolf’s muzzle before attempting to push the monster away. With how near the man was to death, the force used was more akin to a loving stroke than a last-ditch effort to put some distance between the fangs and his flesh.
The arm dropped with a dull thud to the ground as a string of crimson bubbles showcased the last exhale of Officer Gonzalez.
The wolf, satisfied with his victory, lifted a gore-dripping muzzle to focus predatory eyes on his next target.
As a growl radiated from his monstrous vocal cords, the sharp aroma of a voided bowel permeated the room. Jose chuffed, but not from disgust. Instead, the smell was . . . interesting . . . to his lycan nose.
Jose closed his eyes as his nostrils flared while a preternatural olfactory sense processed, separated, and categorized each scent. Metallic blood from the corpse on the ground. Salty sweat and shit from the good doctor. Artificial lemon from the tiles of the room. The wolf could even tell that the HVAC filters that the facility used were well past their useful capacity, saturated with filth much like a child waddling in a diaper that urgently needed to be changed.
Something wafted lightly to his nose, stealing his focus. Jose began hysterically sniffing the air, attempting to locate the scent that brought with it peace and love.
Jose heard a door shut from somewhere off in the distance as his head pivoted to smell his own pelt. A determined nose wandered until the smell was located just below his belly.
Isa, Jose thought as the faint lingering residue of their love making bid its farewell. Even with two showers and being subjected to a torrential downpour, the evidence had remained. He knew he would never again smell her, and it made tears drip down his muzzle as his nostrils eagerly inhaled the fading aroma.
Cracks of a small firearm broke him from his reverie, and Jose turned to face the door where a burly man filled the frame. Painful bolts of lightning shot from his torso as bullets pierced his flesh.
The wolf howled into the air in surprise and rage, sounding like a blast from a ha
unted train’s horn.
There was a click as the magazine ran dry, followed by several more clicks as the burly man stared with disbelieving eyes at the monster before him. His finger played the signal to squeeze the trigger over and over again until his brain rebooted and sent new orders.
The sheets of pain quickly dulled as bullets were pushed from his puckering flesh to tinkle on the tile, the wounds stitching themselves closed. As the wolf healed, its hunger grew precipitously.
Yellow orbs narrowed as white eyes widened, and the wolf cleared the distance in a single leap. Paws pushed into a bulletproof vest and slammed the man on the ground. The officer’s head smashed into the opposite wall, breaking his neck as they landed. The man began to screech at the immediate realization that he was paralyzed and would never move again for as long as he lived. He was in luck, though, as Jose wrapped canine jaws around the bent neck and closed them. Jose yanked his head back and tore free a mouthful of flesh, exposing white vertebrae that quickly stained with the spurting blood.
Jose swallowed and moved on to the man’s arms as the officer died. The muscle of his bulky arms tasted indescribable to Jose’s new palate. After both arms had been reduced to bone, he moved on to the ample meat of the quadriceps. Jose felt more powerful with each mouthful of meat he consumed. It electrified his nerves and sent what could only be described as pleasure down his spine.
Moving on to the torso, Jose tried digging into the vest like he was trying to bury a bone in the yard. Claws raked into the metal, pulling slivers with each pass.
Deciding it was taking too long to get at the prize inside, Jose started eating the officer’s stomach just below the vest.
Two men skidded to a halt at the end of the hall, looked at one another with horrified expressions, and lifted black pistols on instinct.
The wolf lifted a gore-dripping muzzle to stare at the men, daring them to try and stop him. As the flesh slid down his throat in a sloshing gulp, the men began sending rounds down the hall.
Paws exploded off the floor hard enough to send splinters of shattered tile shooting down the hall behind him. The werewolf jumped to the side and began running along the wall — in complete defiance of gravity — before dropping back to the floor and then crashing into the two men.
A swiping claw split one of the officer’s face into five even sections down to, and through, bone. Gray brain matter became visible for a split second before a red sea erupted from the ruptured vascular tissue.
The other officer’s brain was clearly jealous, as it demanded to see the outside world without the eyeballs’ input. The werewolf obliged it, clamping his jaws just below the chin and above the forehead before rushing to meet in the middle. Flesh tore like a tender brisket while bone crumbled like a discarded paper plate underfoot. There was a solitary shriek that began with a ferocity rivaling a bullhorn before exponentially dissipating, like steadily releasing the grip on the neck of a squealing balloon. The head shook once before the body went still. Jose feasted on the bounty laid before him, growing stronger with each mouthful of flesh he consumed.
An alarm bleated with an accompanying flashing crimson light while the overhead lights were shut off.
Jose lifted a dripping muzzle to inspect the annoying, flashing device on the wall as it blared the song of its people. The red light spun in a circle, running first down the hallway and then immediately turning and running on the opposite wall in the other direction, only to repeat over and over again.
With a simple focus of will, the piercing, high-pitched noise was muffled to a dull whine that no longer hurt the wolf’s sensitive ears.
A smell of sweat and the sound of rubber pounding on tile snatched the werewolf’s attention. There were at least three people coming down the hall, and as they neared, the distinct smell of gun oil permeated his flaring nostrils. The part of the monster’s mind that was still human deduced rifles or shotguns had been pulled from storage.
Jose, who was a passenger in his own body, watched as the wolf charged down the hall where the men were about to round the corner.
Cries of surprise rang out as the were plowed into the tight group. The centermost officer — who happened to be a woman — smashed her head against the far wall. An abstract painting of blood smeared the surface as her body slid against the wall to lie on the floor, twitching. A black rifle clattered to the ground.
The wolf slashed his paw at the midsection of the officer on the right, and an arm holding a shotgun dropped to the ground. Intestines uncoiled, like dumping a colander of freshly cooked noodles back into a pot.
From the back seat of his mind, Jose realized he had just taken multiple lives; exactly like the giant werewolf who had killed his best friend, Martin.
This isn’t right, Jose thought to himself. I’m not a monster.
The last officer, who had fallen, scrambled to his feet and brought the barrel of his semiautomatic rifle down on the wolf.
Jose attempted to wrestle control of his mind from the beast, only to be rewarded with round after round pounding his back. A plume of white-hot fire arced down his hind legs before they went numb and refused to hold his weight any longer. The wolf yelped in surprised pain as it pivoted its front legs to align with his attacker.
The rifle clicked on empty as the man ejected the magazine and began to slide in another one from his vest. The wolf growled and squatted down with powerful front legs and then lunged at the man, dragging hind legs like a blanket wrapped around a small child as they walked through the house.
Paws slammed into the man’s thighs and snapped both femurs like twigs underfoot. The officer folded in on himself, with his face attempting to meet his feet but smacking into the wolf’s huge head instead.
Teeth slipped into the soft flesh of the officer’s abdomen and slurped blood, fat, and organs into the hungry mouth.
The wolf swallowed after only chewing once, with the intent of consuming as much of the energy-infused meat in as short of a time as possible.
Tear. Chew. Swallow. Tear. Chew. Swallow.
The officer tried to scream but had his diaphragm shredded before shock washed over him, blessedly dousing the flames of panic and pain.
His pelt, littered with puckering holes, began to spit out fractured mushrooms coated in Teflon, which clattered to the ground.
With each bite, strength flowed into the werewolf which was immediately diverted into healing. Hind legs began to tingle with violent pins and needles before gradually fading, leaving preternaturally powerful appendages.
The wolf stood on all fours, shook as if trying to expel water from his pelt, and then devoured the rest of the man’s meaty appendages. No further footsteps came, though Jose could make out the faint cry of voices stemming from the plastic pieces inserted into the officers ears.
We need to leave, Jose said to the beast in his head.
In answer, the beast lifted his head and looked first down the hallway where they had come, and then the path where the officers had charged from.
That one! Jose indicated, and the wolf sprinted down the latter path.
They came to a large iron door and the wolf jumped to slam into it. It didn’t budge, and a small portion of an iron plate that ran between the bars cut into his paw, drawing blood.
The wolf yelped in pain and lifted his paw to his muzzle, where he licked at the oozing blood.
The wound felt . . . different . . . to Jose, who noticed the relatively small cut was not healing.
Why isn’t it healing? I thought we could heal anything! I mean, I blew a hole through the other wolf’s face, and it closed in front of my eyes!
In response, the wolf whined and looked up at the few specks of blood that stained the iron door.
Steel? I thought it was only silver that could hurt a werewolf.
The wolf chuffed in annoyance while shaking his head. He lifted a paw and ran a sharp claw on the flaking white paint, leaving behind a trail of dark metal.
Iron?
T
he wolf chuffed in approval this time while nodding his head.
You-you can understand me?
The wolf growled.
Right, no time for that now. Um . . . go into that room at the end of the hall.
The wolf did as instructed and padded into the open guardroom. Apparently, they had neglected to shut it during the emergency.
Up there, Jose said as the wolf’s line of sight scanned over the center consol. The wolf placed two paws on the desk and lifted himself up.
Jose read the labels and saw what he was looking for.
Press that red button second from the left.
The wolf pressed it; there was a chime as the door slid open. The were pulled his paw back, leaving a crimson print, and padded to the door leading to the lobby.
A secretary looked over her desk, yelped in terror, and returned to her hiding spot. The wolf ignored her as he pushed the glass doors open and stepped into the orange-and-purple light of dusk.
Outside, Jose discovered he was in a compound at the edge of a city he didn’t recognize. With a quick leap, the wolf cleared the twelve-foot fence with razor wire spanning the top.
Orienting south by focusing on the setting sun, Jose took off into the desert, knowing exactly where he was going.
Chapter 18
S omebody give me a goddamn update!” Hector yelled at the room where the eight leaders of his entire region sat. Never in the history of his rule had Hector held an emergency meeting with his generals on a threat as monumental as this. Pulling his management from their posts meant a loss in focus, which resulted in diminishing sales. If there was one thing Hector couldn’t abide, it was a drop in revenue.
“There are conflicting reports, jefe,” informed Jaime, who was one of Hector’s most trusted employees. “One of my contacts claims that a second wolf has caused a number of casualties, including the family of one of our low-level house sitters, Jose Villalobos.”