“We’re going to be so wonderful together. I promise.”
“What—”
A white-hot line tore across her throat. Coppery, meaty liquid filled her mouth and bubbled from her ruined neck. A kitchen knife clattered to the table, awash with bright red blood. Their eyes met in its reflection. She spasmed, choking, lungs aflame.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead, his shuddering sigh the pale shadow of her last wracking breaths.
“Thank you.”
~
“No, no. This way.” Tim grabbed Gail’s hand, tugged her toward the side of the road.
She frowned at the black space between the driveway and the house, a patch of nothing but dark promises. “Why would we go that way?”
The glazed look in his eyes intensified. “’Cause that’s the way, man. We’ll get you cleaned up and warmed up and then you can get your phone and go on your date. I’ll give you a ride wherever you’re going. You won’t be late. I … I promise.”
She stepped back. “I don’t need cleaning up. And how did you know I was going on a date?”
“You told … I mean … look how you’re dressed, Alice!”
Another step back, hands raised, keeping him in view. “It’s Gail. And hey, thanks for the heroics, but I’m going to get going. You have a nice night.”
A pathetic cry escaped his throat. His eyes cast downward, tears brimming, and when he looked up they crackled with green. “We’re going to be so wonderful together. I promise.”
“Back off.” She took another step, keeping him in sight.
He lunged, snarling. She deflected his clumsy chop down away from her neck, grimaced at a sharp stab to her thigh.
A palm-strike broke his fingers and shattered the hypodermic needle he’d buried in her muscle. Liquid splattered across the skirt. Glass dug into her skin, and burned.
Heat spread from the injection; the arteries in her neck throbbed. He advanced, she backpedaled. Too sluggish, too slow, and the world swam. Strong hands wrapped around her throat.
He squeezed.
She sucked in nothing, clawed at his wrists, fingernails scraping across red leather sleeves. A fury poured into her, filled her as oxygen wouldn’t, overlaid Tim’s face with another. Smoother, younger, crueler, smears of stark white makeup across his face, mouth open in rapture and want.
Harder.
Her head pulsed, and as she groped in vain at air that wouldn’t come, shadows encroached the edges of her vision. She punched but couldn’t build the momentum to hurt him.
Teeth gritted, he bounced her head off the building behind her. Again. Again.
Hands scrambling, she fumbled at his pockets, grabbed something oblong but not much bigger than a pencil. She thumbed a button, cut her finger on the extended blade, and thrust.
Once.
Twice.
A dozen times, and with each stab a shriek of elation ravaged her mind, scoured conscious thought clean with ice-cold rage.
Tim fell, hot dark rivers spurting from his chest and stomach.
She gasped, fell to her knees, worked her mouth to suck in precious, cool air. Tim gurgled, red bubbles foaming from his lips. His glazed expression faded to pain and confusion.
Darkness fell.
~
The brass bell on the door jangled, and freezing air swirled through the shop.
Shelly stifled a smile fifty years in the making. Her daughter’s triumphant return rustled through the racks, jostled shoes and props and set the hanging lights to dancing. She finished adjusting the seam on a band uniform—the local high school would be performing The Music Man and their Harold Hill stood five-two—and then pushed it aside as her customer shuffled around the corner.
In a full turtleneck obviously intended to hide the bruising, Gail hugged a brown parcel tied with twine. Dark bags lurked under her eyes, and a haggard ponytail released more wiry outliers than it contained. Her cheeks sagged, a side-effect of Tim’s—Dave’s—paralytic, poison Shelly had put in the jacket pocket before giving it to Dave. That haggard look would fade eventually, in weeks or months, maybe years. Green flecked her irises, flat and skittish, a scar that might never heal, not in this life.
Yet here she stood, beaten, battered, but alive.
“Hi, Shelly. Um, I’m sorry this is so late.” Her confidence had vanished, replaced with a weary, wary resignation. She set down the package and fumbled for her purse. “What do I owe you?”
The old woman shook her head. No price could hope to match her daughter’s soul returned, whole and hale, by the woman doomed to be a victim. “Nothing, cherie. I saw the news, saw what that boy did, what you had to do. I figure you paid enough for that night, and couldn’t dream of asking for more.”
Gail hung her head. “Thank you.”
“Who was he?” Shelly couldn’t help herself; she didn’t want to know, but had to.
She looked at the floor. “Some guy from the neighborhood. Called himself Tim, but the cops identified him as Dave Taylor. His girlfriend visited me in the—you know, I’m just tired of talking about it, sorry.”
“My apologies. That must have been hard.”
Awkward silence reigned until Shelly’s guilt filled it.
“Is there anything more I can do for you?” She couldn’t beg forgiveness, and it took every ounce of willpower to hide her elation.
“No. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
“I know.” Gail turned without another word and shuffled back the way she’d come.
After the bell jangled again, Shelly waited, then reached up with quivering hands to tug at the string, each movement an effort grown harder with every passing day. With a bit of fuss the knot came loose and the paper uncurled, a flower greeting sunlight, to reveal her daughter’s last outfit. The shirt and scarf almost looked new, but the skirt had faded another shade. A new hole, no bigger than the head of a quilt pin, frayed where the dry cleaner must have scrubbed blood from the felt. Threads weakened by the paralytic couldn’t take that kind of abuse, so another shred of her daughter had fallen to nothing at a stranger’s hands.
Her heart soared as she bunched up the clothing and slid it to the edge of the table, just over the waiting wastebasket.
“Finally. You’ve beaten him. She’s beaten him.” She sat up straight for the first time in decades. “It’s done.”
Alice didn’t reply; she never did.
“No, daughter. You can’t just … you can’t. It’s over. He’s gone. You can rest now. I can rest now. It’s time to let go.”
“Please.”
Alice didn’t reply; she never did.
Her shoulders slumped. As she mended the skirt, she tutted and muttered, as she’d tutted and muttered for fifty-odd years; an endless routine for an endless job. Gripping the table, she forced her aching knees to support her weight and carried her daughter to the rack.
“Well whoever you wear next year, try to be kind.”
TROPHY HUNT
The brick walls kept them out, and even with no fire they wouldn’t dare come down the chimney; the prey had learned something from children’s tales, but so had the hunters. Outside under the blazing sun their howls, shrill and unnatural, mingled with gunfire and raucous laughter. Their prey trapped, the hunt had become a party.
She stepped away from the door, the crack too small to see outside anyway.
“Beth.”
She turned at her husband’s voice, traced up his work boots and denim overalls to his rugged, angular face, just visible in the darkness. Her heart broke at the despair in his expression.
“They’re going to get in.”
She shook her head, an impotent denial of the inevitable. They’d taken the forest, she knew that. The game had fled or been slaughtered and devoured by the savages outside, no matc
h for the trucks and ATVs and guns they’d taken to in modern day. Even rodents had gotten scarce, what trails there were crisscrossed and obscured by flat, wide tracks that stank of rubber and gasoline.
“No, baby, they’re not. They’re going to drink and fight and get tired and lazy, and we’ll slip out when they don’t expect it. This isn’t a siege, it’s—”
Creosote fell into the fireplace. Dust rained from the rafters. The floor shuddered as massive diesel engines rumbled in the distance.
“They’re going to get in.”
Her heart raged against the truth in it. The last of their kind, at least this side of the Rocky Mountains, they were too big a prize to let get away. Homo sapiens sapiens didn’t brook competition. They never had, even after their scientists had learned that their myths were wrong, that their respective species couldn’t crossbreed. If anything it had emboldened them, given them an endgame.
Bullets pecked at the façade, a waste of ammo and effort. Someone whooped in drunken triumph. More laughter, more whoops and hollering. More pecks.
Hunting them below population viability, dooming their species, that hadn’t satisfied them. No, their bloodlust demanded lives, pelts, taxidermy bodies posed as fearsome statues by cabin fireplaces.
Bragging rights. The scourge of the darkness under the pines, the masters of night, the lords of the moon; their hunters had reduced them to not only to prey, but to bragging rights.
God, how she hated them.
The house shuddered again.
The hatred bloomed in her breast, spread through her in shockwaves, and she grunted at the first twinge of the change. She crouched, breaths short and shallow. Coarse brown hair sprouted from her arms, claws from her fingertips.
Strong hands grabbed her head, pulled her upright. She snarled and tried to back away, but John pressed her against the wall and locked her eyes with his. “No, baby, you can’t do this. Not now. They want this. Want us.”
She growled, deep in her throat … and he licked her cheek. Her cheek, her forehead, her hair. He held her and she folded into his warmth and let his words roll over her, soft babbled truths about love and hard lies about survival. He smelled of wolf and fear and desperation, of love and comfort and worry. She let the change bleed out of her and sighed, exhausted.
Thunder-that-wasn’t rumbled in the distance, and she ran her fingers down his cheek.
“Thank you.” They stood in silence a moment, but she couldn’t help herself. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Felling trees. They’re either going to make a battering ram or a giant bonfire.”
They’d never get through the windows. The fort house had once been a frontier jail, and had thick iron bars in front of the glass, rusted and pitted with age but still thick. Behind them they’d nailed up thick hardwood boards and old tin sheeting. The hunters had tried to force the door, but the heavy steel held, and she’d shot three men through the mail slot to deter further attempts. She smelled them outside, the bloody bodies left as bait, but she couldn’t risk opening the door. But God how she wanted to.
The hunters didn’t know the wolves only had seven rounds left for the .308, the only reason they hadn’t stormed the place.
She pushed him back with her fingertips, no longer claws. “Not a bonfire. They don’t just want us dead, they want trophies.”
“But they’re cowards. If they breach the door or the wall, they know they’re going to die. The first however many, anyway. They’ll burn us out, just as soon as they’re ready.”
“No, baby, you’re stuck in last century.” Two centuries ago, really, but this one hadn’t lost its baby teeth, at least in her mind. “They’ll use grenades. A small hole, in it goes, and we’re diving for cover or dead. They’ll breach two places at once, split us up.” She looked down, and wished she hadn’t.
Their six pups dozed in the plastic laundry basket, heaped amongst dirty clothes and an old leather saddlebag, oblivious to the danger of their situation. Ears flat, they wouldn’t open their eyes for another few days. Beautiful, fragile, helpless.
She hadn’t eaten in two days, and hunger clawed at her ribs. The pups took from her what they needed and left her starving, and in a lean spring she’d be happy to give it. A pathetic cry tore at her heart, so she shifted, her once-sleek fur patchy with mange and malnutrition as she slipped from her human clothes. She tipped the basket and let her pups nuzzle against her, let them suckle. Weak from fear and starvation, she closed her eyes, head resting on the floor.
She didn’t expect sleep to come, but pretending helped.
~
John waited for the sun to drop below the horizon before peeling back the board from the second story bathroom window. Campfires dotted the surrounding woodland, devoid of brush or cover. Scents of roasting meat and beer and piss filled his nostrils, but his dry mouth wouldn’t salivate. They’d cut the power, and with it the plumbing, and what little water they had left would go to Beth. For the pups.
He waited and watched, his human eyes more suitable for long-distance scanning than his wolf eyes, despite the darkness. A man sat on a log not far off, binoculars in his lap, a sandwich in his hands. He didn’t so much look at the house as stare off into space in that general direction. A bullhorn leaned against his ankle.
Lightning flashed in the distance, and John caught a glint next to a haggard beechnut tree. He waited and watched, and in time the silhouette resolved itself into a prone man or woman with a rifle, scanning the house through a scope.
He ducked back, replaced the board, and licked his lips. He’d seen two. How many more? How careful were they being?
The bloody, furry mess in the bathtub wouldn’t answer him. Chet had taken a bullet in the chest, and while he’d made it into the house, it didn’t take more than a minute for him to bleed out right through the bandage. At least it was too cold for flies.
John’s stomach growled, and he turned away from the corpse. That path led to madness, and while his stomach didn’t care, his mind still did.
They never should have come back for the pups.
~
Hayden looked up from the rifle, frowning. She’d expected another monster like she’d seen with her daddy, not a tired-looking man in overalls. He’d looked sad, worried, not hateful and violent. Not like a demon at all.
“The land ain’t tame,” Daddy had said. “Won’t be, until the last of the monsters are gone.”
Most people didn’t believe in monsters. Her friend’s parents taught them they weren’t real. Her daddy had done the opposite, taught her and trained her, took her hunting and tracking from the time she could walk. And two weeks ago, for her fourteenth birthday, he’d given her a Ruger M77 .270 with a night-vision scope, and a trip to a “hunting safari” in western Montana.
Twenty men hunting five werewolves. It didn’t seem fair.
The forward group harvested two before Hayden had even gotten into the truck, and the next few hours consisted of a harrowing chase through half-cleared woodland, bouncing over roots and creeks while her daddy lectured her on the technique.
“Like wolves’ll run deer until they drop from exhaustion, you keep the weres on the run long enough and they’ll turn and fight. They got way more endurance than you or me, but can’t out-marathon a tank of gas.
“You hunt wolves like they hunt deer, not how we do.”
They’d spotted their quarry just as they ran for a two-story brick fortress. Daddy’d fishtailed to a stop, and Hayden used the window as a bench rest. Huge beasts covered in dense fur, they moved so fast she had a hard time picking out detail. Humanoid, anyway, which told her all she needed to know. She’d trained on the front one, pulled the trigger just as he opened the door. His companions dove into him, carrying him through into the darkness.
“Dammit, Hay!” her dad had said as the door slammed shut.
�
��I got him.” They locked eyes, but she wouldn’t back down. “Solid shot, upper ribs. He won’t make it.”
He’d mussed her hair. “That’s my girl.”
~
Beth startled awake as a thunderclap rocked the building. John stood over her, human and dressed. “We need to go.”
“What?” She sat up, naked and human, her pups mewling as they slid into her lap.
“They’ve got sentries, but the lightning’ll blind them, and if the rain’s hard enough it’ll bog down their trucks.”
She stood and pulled on her jeans, filthy denim covering legs clammy with old sweat. “They’ll be watching the doors.”
He nodded. “And the windows.”
“So—”
He held up a finger to stop her, then pointed at the fireplace. “We go up.”
She blinked in disbelief. “That’s crazy.”
“If we stay here we die.”
She crouched, picked up her pups one by one and put them in the saddle bags. They didn’t even have names yet, wouldn’t until they were old enough to go on hunts with the pack—with their father, all that was left of their pack. Done, she pulled on a T-shirt and stood.
“Okay.” Another peal of thunder rumbled through.
She crouched into the fireplace, rank with old soot, bat guano, and mold. Rain spattered her face as she looked up the chimney. Dark clouds blanketed the sky above the narrow opening, and claustrophobia tightened her chest. Wolves weren’t meant for narrow brick crevices, weren’t meant to climb.
She stood, just able to fit inside, and John cinched the saddle bags to her thigh.
“Go, baby. I’ll meet you up top.”
She pressed her forearms against the opposite side of the chimney and braced her back against the opposite wall. Her legs barely fit, and she dug her bare feet into the slippery gunk to keep any kind of purchase. John pushed from below to help her the first several feet, and a flood of lightheadedness struck the moment he let go.
“I can’t—”
In the Garden of Rusting Gods Page 7