CHAPTER 6
We didn’t get lost on the return from the substation because Tom showed us a faster way to get back to the lake. It was well after midnight and Mandy the flirtatious desk clerk was nowhere to be seen. I think the guys were a little saddened about that.
Once back at the lodge, we quickly set up the map in the boys’ room. None of the pins had fallen out and everything looked like it had back at the station—though I’m almost certain if any had managed to come dislodged, Deputy Black would have remembered where they’d been. The room wasn’t very big and had a pair of queen beds and a cot in it, so it was rather crowded. Also, it smelled bad, because even though everyone had showered before going to the substation, their beaver-stank-impregnated dirty clothing was piled on the bathroom floor.
Tom squinted at his map, trying to make sure everything was where it should be. The light in the room was okay, which meant the deputy was overdue for an eye exam. “Like I was telling you, ignoring the animal kills, and looking at just the missing people and bodies, it makes an oval.”
“It’s a forced concave,” Justin agreed, joining Tom at the map. He pointed a finger at the ridges to the north and south. “It’s an oval because of the rugged terrain. The valley here runs east to west. This other one is a little more skewed, but it fits.”
“You can read a map good, but you don’t strike me as country.”
“Naw, Jack, I’m from Chicago. You spend time patrolling in Nam and you get real good at land nav, or else.”
“I can respect that.” Tom turned back to his map. “My working theory has been its den is somewhere in the middle, and it ranges out to hunt. The rugged terrain is why there’s no witnesses. I bet the lair’s up near here somewhere.”
“Do you know the area?” I asked.
“Like the back of my hand. The rest of the guys really think I’m into camping, but truth be told I kinda hate sleeping on the ground. It kills my back. But ever since I saw that thing it’s haunted me, so I’ve gone up there every chance I get to scout around. I know every trail now. I’ve gone in with pack horses for weeks at a time. It’s eaten up all my vacation for the last few years.”
“Your wife okay with that?” Kimpton quipped.
“She divorced me.”
“Oh . . . Sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was powerfully ugly.”
With all that time searching for something that he didn’t comprehend, and really wasn’t prepared to face, Tom was really lucky he’d not gotten eaten. “The problem is, you were thinking about it like a natural creature. If we’re right about this being a werewolf, its lair is probably a house here in town, and it looks like a normal man or woman, until it’s time to hunt.”
Tom took his time processing what I’d said. “Alrighty, then.”
He seemed to take that in stride, so I continued. “I’m not absolutely certain it’s a werewolf we’re dealing with, though. We’ve got to keep in mind the possibility it could be something else entirely, like a skinwalker. Area’s right for one.”
“Jeez, I hope not,” Lizz said. “Those things scare me.”
“Worse than a . . . werewolf?” Tom asked, disbelieving.
“Ayup.”
“The timing of the disappearances mostly correlate to the full moon.” Alex was sitting on the bed, flipping through the selected case files. “That, and the state of the bodies”—he paused to cringe at a Polaroid of a crime scene—“suggests lycanthrope.”
“Lycanthrope?” Tom asked.
“You know anybody local who vanishes for three nights a month, then appears like they’ve lost a lot of weight after every full moon?”
“No one springs to mind, but I can’t say I was on the lookout for that.”
Melanie had been going through the files too, and she caught my attention and gave one of the papers a little wave. That meant she’d fulfilled my whispered instructions before we’d left the substation. That would be the contact information on last month’s attack survivor. Because if she’d been bitten and infected, she’d be changing this full moon. I gave Melanie a little nod and she got off the bed. “Excuse me for a minute. I’ve got to make a phone call.”
Tom didn’t even notice her go. “Alright, we need to talk about this whole werewolf thing. Mostly, because, well, werewolves aren’t supposed to be real.”
“They’re real,” Kimpton stated.
“Yeah, brother.” Justin nodded in agreement. “Real dangerous too.”
“You’ve seen a werewolf?”
The newbies hadn’t, but I raised my hand. “Seen them and shot them.” Also was friendly-ish with one, and he’d saved my life and given me a job, but I left that part off, not just for Tom, but for the rest of the team, because Earl liked to keep his secrets even more than I did.
“I hold the all-time company record for the long-range werewolf kill.” Lizz really was proud of that.
“What company?” Tom asked.
“PUFF on werewolves is nice,” Alex snuck that comment in.
“What’s a puff?”
“Look,” I cut Tom off brusquely. It was getting late, and frankly I was exhausted. The nagualii was really pushing at me. It wanted out, to hunt this so-called predator and show it who was boss. “I know you’ve got a lot of questions, but you’ll just have to be patient and we’ll explain everything in more detail tomorrow. It’s been a really long day for us.”
“We had to wrangle a giant beaver this afternoon,” Kimpton said, perfectly deadpan.
“Long story short, we’re professional monster hunters. And I mean literal monsters. You know, the kind you hear about in horror stories? Only, you can’t go around talking about those things existing because certain elements of the federal government will shoot you if you do. Deputy Arnold said you were a conspiracy nut? Well, this is one of those conspiracies that turns out to be true. Put on your tinfoil hat and buckle up.”
* * *
Dawn was beautiful in the morning up in the mountains of California. The smog was nonexistent, and the air was filled with the scent of pine. The waters of Lake Arrowhead were still, with just a few wisps of fog drifting up from the surface. It was peaceful, tranquility defined.
It was immediately shattered when Deputy Arnold showed up at the small, family-owned restaurant where Lizz and I had just sat down and ordered breakfast. He was pale and sweating.
“There was another attack last night,” the deputy said without preamble, pulling up a seat at the table. “I’m about to head off-shift. The sarge told me to come and let you know. Also, he’s pissed off. You people were supposed to be hunting this cougar, not spending a night at the best lodge in town.”
This was not the same jovial individual we’d met the night before. I signaled for the waitress to bring him a cup of coffee.
He lowered his voice to a whisper to not scare the other diners. “I just left there. I don’t know how it smashed through the front door.” Deputy Arnold’s hands shaking. “Haven’t seen that much blood . . . didn’t know people could have so much.”
“Multiple victims this time?”
“Father and daughter.”
“Where?”
“North end of town. Outskirts. One of the older homes near Route 143.”
“It’s getting bolder.” Lizz seemed unperturbed, stirring milk and sugar into her coffee. “You say it busted through the front door?”
“Yeah,” Deputy Arnold nodded as the waitress poured him a cup. He managed to spoon two scoops of sugar into it without making too much of a mess. He waited for the waitress to leave, before adding, “The inside of the house is destroyed. There’s fucking blood on the ceiling. How did it get on the ceiling?”
“Who’re the victims?” Lizz asked.
“Ronnie and Mandy Calhoun.” Deputy Arnold took a sip of coffee. Or tried to, rather, but his hands were shaking too much to drink without spilling. “Pretty young thing. What a waste.”
“Mandy. Did she work at the lodge?”
“Yeah, nights.”
I winced. That meant we were probably some of the last people to see her alive. She must have gotten off work, gone home, and gotten killed soon after.
“Did you tell Tom?”
“We called out everybody. He’s on the way over. There were pieces everywhere!”
“Deputy?” Lizz stopped stirring her coffee. She reached out and touched his hand. Concern was etched deeply on her features. “Deputy Arnold? Did the sergeant tell you to go home?”
“He said to bring you to the scene. Then . . . I forget.”
“Then you’re off duty?”
“I think—yes,” Deputy Arnold said, nodding slowly.
“Okay, tell you what,” Lizz said, standing up carefully and helping him do the same. “Do you have a wife, girlfriend, or a roommate?”
“No. Why?”
“It’s nice to have people around when you decompress. Which I can see you need to do. We’ll gather the rest of our team and find our own way to the scene.”
“Take the main road around the lake west, then right at the second stop sign. There’s a lot of squad cars out front so you can’t miss it.”
“Do you have duty tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Good, good.” Lizz continued to nod. “Then I’d recommend you proceed to get rip-roaring drunk, until you puke your guts out in your toilet, and then pass out and not have any bad dreams.”
“But I don’t drink.”
“No butts, mister. I’d go light on breakfast if I were you. No point in paying a lot of money for something you’re probably going to upchuck later.”
Lizz guided him out the door and back to his car. I was starting to suspect that Lizz wasn’t in this business because of the nice paycheck, but rather because she genuinely cared about people.
“Mandy seemed like a lovely young woman,” Lizz said after returning and sliding back into our booth. “It is a waste.”
It was also a slap in the face. Any Hunter worth their salt was offended whenever innocents got hurt by the forces of evil, but when it was someone you knew, even in brief passing, that was extra galling. It made you feel guilty, like you should have been able to prevent it somehow. Except that was a pointless path to go down.
“It’s escalating.” I took a drink of my coffee. “They’ve documented this before. Werewolves will get into a bloodlust spiral, and it’ll just get worse and worse until they’re put down.”
“Even the monsters who learn how to pass for human for a while eventually lose it and go psycho at some point,” Lizz said.
“Not all of them,” I snapped.
“Well, ain’t you disagreeable before breakfast.”
The waitress was bringing our food out to us, and the boys and Melanie were out shopping for supplies and wouldn’t be back for a few minutes, so I dug in with gusto. I mean, might as well not let a perfectly good stack of pancakes go to waste. We were about to go examine a murder scene, but I’d seen some crazy, horrific things while in the Middle East. What was a single werewolf attack compared to that?
* * *
Syrup burns when coming back up. Especially when it’s mixed with pancakes and coffee.
“Shit.” I spit the last little bit of stomach acid, coffee, boysenberry, and pancake from my mouth. I would never be able to eat either ever again. Just the thought of food caused my stomach to roil dangerously.
“You okay?” Alex asked as he knelt down next to me. He’d gone inside and looked green around the gills as well. Luckily all he’d eaten beforehand was a piece of toast.
“That’s . . . ” My voice trailed off. In all my years I had never seen such carnage. It would haunt me forever. I took a deep, shuddering breath and steadied myself. I was a Monster Hunter, and the most experienced one here, damn it, so I steadied my tone. “I’ve seen worse.”
I was lying, of course. I’d never seen anything like that. Mr. Calhoun had been ripped to pieces by the werewolf. There had been entrails dangling from the cheap light fixture in the living room. The ceiling was over fifteen feet high. I had no idea how they had even gotten up there. Had the werewolf tossed them into the air like a child throwing confetti?
It had just gotten worse from there, like he’d played with the body like a dog with a chew toy. I shuddered at the memory as a fresh wave of nausea tore through me.
The worst part was the smell. It wasn’t the coppery tang of blood that had gotten me sick, but the musky scent of a werewolf marking his territory. The others had smelled it too, but they weren’t the ones with supernatural senses. To me it had been extra pungent and offensive. This werewolf was no juvenile. This was his territory and he wanted the world to know it. The stench was powerful enough to give the nagualii pause.
“What do we do now?” Justin asked from the doorway. One quick peek inside had been more than enough for him. Smart.
Standing up, I looked at the shattered door, and spit a final time. “We kill this fucker.”
Melanie appeared from around the front of the house, walking across the Calhouns’ scraggly lawn, and she got a distressed look on her face when she saw that I’d been throwing up. I kicked myself for showing weakness in front of the newbies. I was supposed to be the example.
“Sorry, Chloe. The other body is on the side of the road.” She looked toward the darkened house. “Is it that bad in there?”
“Oh yeah,” Alex said. “I’d skip it if I were you.”
I walked to where the deputies were taking pictures and putting up yellow tape in the front of the house. Normally we wouldn’t have access to a crime scene like this, but they’d all be given the same story about my team being wildlife biologists, so we got a pass.
Tom Black was standing there looking downright weary. A big part of that was probably because people didn’t sleep very good after somebody dropped a bomb on them like werewolves being real. I’d warned him not to tell anyone about what we’d talked about last night, and since his fellow deputies weren’t sending him to the looney bin, he’d listened.
“The paperboy spotted her this morning and called us.”
Thankfully, her body appeared to be in far better shape. “May I?”
Tom gestured for the other deputies to get out of my way. “From the blood trail, she got injured inside, probably in the kitchen, but it’s hard to sort out because . . . well . . . ”
“I was just in there. I know.”
“Then she ran for it and made it to the road before she fell, probably from the blood loss. She managed to crawl a bit farther before passing out.”
I squatted next to Mandy. The poor girl was still dressed like we’d last seen her, complete with name tag, and it was obviously she’d died terrified. She’d been bitten on one arm and her shoulder . . . The wounds were savage, but compared to what I’d seen in the house, this was downright rational in comparison.
And that damned smell was all over this spot. The werewolf had followed her out here and sniffed around her as she’d crawled across the gravel. He easily could have finished her off, but he’d only bit her and then left it to nature to decide her fate. The werewolf had taken his fury out on the male. That one he’d wanted dead. The female he hadn’t. If he’d been a little more careful, a little less brutal, she wouldn’t have bled out, but would have lived . . . infected with lycanthropy.
“Tom, was the victim who got bit but escaped last month pretty?”
“Very much so. Why?”
“We’ve got big problems.”
“No shit, lady. We’ve got three bodies in two nights,” said another one of the deputies. “Some cat expert.”
He had no idea. I stood up and started walking rapidly back toward the van, signaling for the team to gather up. We had work to do.
Tom hurried after me. “What’s going on?”
“The werewolf is recruiting a pack.”
* * *
Melanie Simmons surprised—and impressed—the hell out of me.
I’d been on the fence about how suitable she was for this job. Sure, she was smart, but she also struck me as a gentle soul and something of a bleeding heart who always assumed the best in others. In normal society, those were fine traits, except our business depended on us being able to dish out sudden, unrelenting violence with zero hesitation. In training, whenever I’d brought up some new kind of monster, if its evil nature wasn’t painfully, glaringly obvious, she had always been the one to wonder if maybe there wasn’t some better way to deal with it than just shooting it and collecting the bounty.
Looking back, I think honestly part of my original problem with her was that asking questions like that reminded me too much of the questions the Shacklefords had asked before deciding to spare my life, and I didn’t like putting myself in the same category as the nasty things I’d been teaching about . . . which really did deserve whatever Hunters could inflict on them.
Even among my own kind, I was an oddity. Just like Earl was an oddity among werewolves. The vicious killer we were hunting now? That was werewolf normal. That was what we needed Hunters to expect. There was no room for kindness or wishful thinking with most of the things we dealt with, and hesitating to pull the trigger in case you’d found the one-in-a-million civilized one was a great way for Hunters to get killed.
I was already responsible for the death of a couple of teammates. I couldn’t bear to be the reason for any more. Which was probably why Melanie’s Pollyanna nature had rubbed me the wrong way.
Except once I explained to the team my theory that this werewolf had—for whatever reason—decided to start building a pack of his own, and that he had a type—beautiful young women—Melanie had immediately suggested her plan.
“Use me as bait.”
“What?”
“Use me as bait.”
The rest of us shared a nervous look.
“You crazy?” Justin asked.
“This sicko wants a werewolf harem. Use me to draw him out.”
“She’s definitely nuts,” Kimpton agreed. “No way.”
“He likes pretty young girls. I’m a pretty young girl.” Nobody here could disagree with that obvious fact. Even I had to admit Melanie was a knockout.
“Girl, you’re a stone-cold fox,” Justin said.
“Thank you.”
“And you’ve lost your damned mind wanting to be werewolf bait.”
“Hear me out. Assuming he’s a local, I’ll put on a cute outfit and go around town today talking about where my campsite is. His last pick died. He’ll be looking for a replacement.”
“So we parade you around like a piece of meat and hope a supernatural killer shows up to try and bite you?” I snorted. “Brilliant.”
“We’ve only got one more day of the full moon to try and catch him, then we’ve got to wait a month. And he’s been careful up until recently. He might decide all these killings have drawn too much attention and move to a new territory. Tonight is our only shot. And you taught us yourself that when werewolves get ramped up like this, the killings just get worse. He’s going after someone tonight. It might as well be someone prepared.”
Immediately, Justin, Alex, and Kimpton started arguing with her about how incredibly stupid and dangerous that was. Tom was still too confused to have an opinion, but he struck me as an honorable old-school cowboy sort, so once he caught up he probably wouldn’t like the idea much either.
Except everything Melanie said had been on point. I couldn’t take her place. I was no slouch in the looks department, but there was the very real possibility the werewolf’s superior senses would recognize me for what I really was, and then he’d know it was a trap. Nagualii and other shapeshifters tended to avoid each other.
“When you go camping by yourself with a werewolf on the loose, do you want us to put a stake in the ground and tie you up to it, like we’re sacrificing a goat?” Lizz clearly wasn’t impressed with the idea. “I’d volunteer but I’m old and I don’t get the impression he’s into short chicks.”
“Lizz, did you bring that scope that can see in the dark for your rifle?”
“Of course I did, Chloe. I don’t leave home without it.”
“You got night vision, Lizz?” Justin was surprised. “That’s some high-tech shit right there.”
“I picked up an AN/PVS-2B scope back in St. Louis. It’ll work well enough in bright moonlight.”
“How the hell you get your hands on one of those? We couldn’t even get them in Nam.”
“Oh, it fell off the back of a truck and I found it in an alley, y’know?”
“Good,” I said. “Then we’ll pick a spot where Lizz can be on the high ground watching Melanie’s campsite, which needs to be in a clearing so we can observe the approach. The rest of us will have to hold back far enough he doesn’t sense us.”
“Hold up a second,” Kimpton said to me. “You can’t be serious about going through with this.”
“I’m dead serious.” And if anyone doubted me, I’d send them into that house to look around to decide for themselves if it was worth it, because I wasn’t about to let that happen again on my watch. “You can be chivalrous all you want but everything the damsel volunteering for distress just said is right. If we don’t catch him tonight, we might lose him. He could even calm back down after this full moon passes. The murder frenzy would be over, but he’d go back to killing a couple hikers or two a year for who knows how long until we catch him. Or worse, he moves on, and is successful infecting others and we won’t know about it until there’s a pack of them to deal with.”
“The Pinnacles,” Tom suggested. “I know a few spots up there that are perfect for what you’re talking about. They’re in his preferred hunting grounds, and there’s some rock formations downwind we could hide in. You got radios so she can call us for backup?”
“We do. And an expert on werewolves taught us that a little wolfsbane on your person can help mask your scent from them.”
“I thought you were the experts?”
“Not compared to this guy.” And unlike the human experts, Earl didn’t have to guess about what worked. “Werewolves can still smell its presence. It just messes with their noses, so he might get suspicious that someone is using it to sneak up on him.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Alex said. “Wolfsbane, or monkshood, is officially known as Acontium, and grows naturally in the mountain valleys of California.”
“You are such a dork,” Melanie said. “Like, the king of dorks.”
“Seriously. He should go on that Jeopardy! show,” Justin added. “We get home, somebody dial up Art Fleming.”
Alex shrugged. “I remember what I read. So unless Encyclopedia Britannica is lying, there should be wolfsbane in the air here anyway.”
“This is a small town. Everybody’s already talking about the last murder. I’d tell the boys to keep it secret, but word will get out about these two new ones no matter what,” Tom said. “It won’t make no sense for one young lady to be off camping by herself if she knows a wild animal is on the loose.”
“That’s suspicious, anyway,” Kimpton pointed out. “Let me go with her and pretend to be her boyfriend.”
Melanie laughed. “Oh, I’d bet you’d like that.”
“Hey, I said pretend. I’m not making a play. But if we’re together in town I can talk a big game about how I’m not scared of no mountain lion, baby, you’re safe with me, I’ll protect you, that sort of thing. Let the werewolf think I’m dumb and cocky.”
Kimpton struck me as kind of quiet and humble, though. War changes people, and I had a feeling that in Kimpton’s case, it had left him a lot more reserved and untrusting. “Can you pull off a convincing swagger, farm boy?”
“You’re looking at the 1967 Montana state-champion football team’s starting quarterback. I think I can remember how to do cocky.”
“An extra person might scare the werewolf off, though,” Lizz said.
I didn’t think so. Lizz hadn’t seen the inside of that house. If anything, the presence of another male would probably provoke our werewolf to even greater anger, which hopefully would make him reckless. “When the werewolf strikes, it’ll probably be lightning fast, and he’ll probably take out what he perceives as the biggest threat first. That’ll be you.”
“I know,” Kimpton answered. “But two sets of eyes are better than one.”
I mulled it over, and even though we’d just put in a lot more thought than Marco had for his just grab the giant beaver plan, I still wished he was here and calling the shots, because I really didn’t like this sudden weight on my shoulders. I was about to send two newbies into serious danger.
“Alright . . . but there’s one last thing everybody here needs to come to terms with. This is a werewolf we’re dealing with. You might get killed. But worse, if you get bitten, you’re going to be infected.” Earl had told me that occasionally a werewolf tried to resist the descent into madness and evil, but overwhelmingly they were doomed to failure, and the most merciful thing to do for them was provide a quick death via silver bullet. “There’s no cure. There’s no coming back. It’s a nightmare, and you can count on the fingers of one hand how many werewolves in the history of the world didn’t turn into baby-eating killing machines who would make Charlie Manson blush.”
“I don’t want to go out like that, no siree,” Lizz said.
“Don’t worry, blood.” Justin thumped Kimpton on the back. “If you turn, I’ll cap you.”
“Thanks, bud. Real comforting.”
That was it. We had the bones of a plan. The rest was just details. I handed out assignments and we went to work.
As Melanie and I were walking to my car, she said, “Thanks for trusting me, Chloe. I won’t let you down.”
“My approval is the last thing you need to be worried about right now.”
* * *
Late that night I was lying on a pile of rocks, looking down at Melanie and Kimpton’s campfire. Lizz was a few feet away with a Winchester Model 70 with a starlight scope mounted on it. The gigantic tube was heavy and awkward, but it was a nifty invention that magnified ambient light. It wouldn’t work in the pitch black, but on a night like this, with a brilliant white moon overhead, Lizz could basically see in the dark.
So could I, and I did it without the miracles of modern technology. Only that wasn’t the sort of thing you bragged about to your fully human coworkers. I avoided doing my cat-eye trick most of the time, because my eyes went from brown to a brilliant turquoise color and my pupils became vertical slits of gold. That’s the sort of thing people notice, except right now it was worth the risk, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to point a flashlight my way anytime soon.
Lizz hadn’t made a sound for hours. The change was eerie. Normally, the tiny woman would talk your ear off, but when she went into huntress mode, she became so perfectly quiet and still that occasionally I wondered if she was still alive. Every once in a while she’d move enough to unkink some muscle or to keep a limb from falling asleep, but she always managed to do it in time with the breeze so the noise wouldn’t be noticed.
Despite her telling me that this was no big deal, and she’d done this sort of thing many times, Lizz had to be feeling the pressure. I knew I was. To those kids down there we were their eyes, early warning system, and best hope for survival.
Justin, Alex, and Tom were hidden among the boulders below us. As soon as Liz fired, they’d run straight toward the camp. They were all armed with rifles with powerful flashlights taped under their barrels, and which were loaded with some of MHI’s rare and precious silver bullets.
Melanie and Kimpton sat next to the fire, by the blue-and-white tent and a cooler full of beers they’d bought in town today. It turned out Kimpton played the guitar, and decently too. He’d bought one of those too, telling me that it was necessary for the act, so he’d need MHI to reimburse him. I told him if he lived through the night, I’d be happy to.
I could hear him singing from a long way off, but more importantly, so would the werewolf. And it wasn’t like the extra noise was going to cover up the approach. You could only hear a stalking werewolf when it wanted you to, especially one this experienced. Kimpton’s repertoire consisted mostly of Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins songs. The two of them did a pretty good rendition of “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation.” If they didn’t get eaten, they could take that show on the road.
So with wolfsbane in our pockets and rifles in hand, we waited, nervous, hoping our werewolf would show, while a tiny-frightened part of me fervently wished it wouldn’t. I wanted to kill this werewolf, and then my team could drink that cooler full of beers in celebration, but at the same time I was scared. Mostly for Melanie and Kimpton, but also for the rest of us. Werewolves are unpredictable. If things went wrong the whole team could die out here. Well, except for Rhino, who was still in the hospital, but I bet he’d feel really bad about it.
Hours passed. I couldn’t even say how many because moving enough to look at my watch might make too much noise. They got tired of singing, and now Kimpton and Melanie were just talking. They made a convincing couple.
Even with my magic eyes, it was Lizz’s science fiction gadget that spotted the werewolf first. I knew something was going on because I could actually hear Lizz suddenly take a breath. I looked in the direction her muzzle was pointed, and sure enough, a shadow was moving through the grass, hunched low and skulking toward the camp. From two hundred yards away, the only thing I could tell was that it was too big to be a deer, and it sure wasn’t moving like a person.
Tom had picked the perfect spot for our trap. The werewolf would have no choice but to cross fifty yards of mostly open grass before he could get in striking range. There were no trees big enough to hide it from a bullet.
Lizz slowly, gently, clicked off her rifle’s safety.
Suddenly, the shadow stood upright and ran toward the camp. The werewolf was impatient, eager for blood. Lizz now had a moving target.
She exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The Winchester barked.
The shadow spun sideways, but it was still headed toward the camp.
Lizz calmly reached up and worked the bolt, ejecting the case and feeding another silver round into the chamber.
I jumped up and started running downhill.
Kimpton and Melanie had been amped up for hours, and they reacted the instant the sound of the gunshot reached their ears, reaching under their blankets to pull out the shotguns Rhino had left in his van. They knew Lizz was shooting, but not where.
Then the werewolf entered their firelight.
It was tall and lean, with disproportionately long limbs that ended in terrible claws. Its shaggy, canine head was aimed straight at Kimpton as it lurched toward him.
Lizz hit it again.
Then Melanie and Kimpton were firing like crazy, but I was leaping down boulders and lost sight of the action. The boys were leaving their hiding places, dressed in camouflage, faces painted, and turning on their big flashlights as I rushed past them. I was running as fast as I could, which by human standards was incredibly quick. I crossed the scrub-covered ground in no time, heading straight for the campfire, as the flashlights bobbed along behind me.
When I got there, Melanie and Kimpton were standing, shotguns shouldered, still aimed at where the werewolf had been standing a moment ago. Blood had been splattered all over their tent, but none of it appeared to be theirs.
“It went that way,” Kimpton said, gesturing with the muzzle of his Browning Auto 5.
I spotted it moving toward the trees and gave chase. A second later, one of the flashlights swung that way, and I heard Tom say, “Dear sweet Jesus,” when it revealed the running werewolf to the rest of them for a split second.
There was a lot of blood on the grass. So much I could follow this wet trail in the dark. It was hurt bad, and unlike regular bullets, a werewolf’s regenerative powers wouldn’t work on silver. He wouldn’t be going far. I let my eyes return to normal so my team wouldn’t see them glowing in the dark.
Even though everyone was excited, I shouted for them to slow down. The blood loss meant time was on our side, and the last thing we needed to do was to chase stupidly, only to have him be waiting in ambush, or circle around behind us to pick someone off. I turned on my flashlight and took point.
The werewolf only made it another hundred yards running on fear and adrenaline before he fell the first time. There was an obvious spot in the mud where he had gone down, and claw marks where he had used a tree to pull itself back up. This creature had been so careful that it had avoided leaving any tracks for Tom to find for years, but in his haste, the tracks he was leaving were a frightening composite of wolf and man. He had fallen again, going downhill, and had left a long blood smear and clawed handprint on the rock. The run had turned into a stagger, and now he was on his hands and knees.
I spotted the werewolf at the edge of a stream, panting, dying, already reverting back to human form, as mortally wounded werewolves tended to do before they expired. That made covering up their corpses convenient for the MCB a lot of the time.
We approached cautiously, guns up. He looked toward us and snarled, but the bones of his face were already melting and twisting, revealing hints of the human inside.
Melanie aimed her shotgun, but I put my hand on the warm barrel and gently shoved it down. “Silver’s expensive. He’s done.”
Very few human beings ever got to see this kind of transformation and live to tell the tale, so my team watched, transfixed, as the werewolf gradually shrank into a thin, grey-haired man. Claws crawled back beneath fingernails. Bones cracked. Teeth contracted. And now he was just bloody, naked, and pathetic.
He reached down and touched the pattern of weeping buckshot holes in his side and cried out in pain as the silver pellets sizzled. There was a bullet hole through his shoulder and the way it was leaking, Lizz had severed his subclavian artery. A human being would have dropped in seconds, but werewolves were incredibly resilient.
“I recognize him. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around town.” Tom suddenly shouted at the werewolf, “Why? Why’d you have to hurt all those folks?”
“There’s not going to be a good answer,” I told him.
Except then the werewolf surprised me, because I’d figured he was way past being able to speak. “I only wanted to be left alone, but then she appeared, three moons ago, commanding me to grow my family. To bring her an army. I was loyal. I did what I was told.”
Curious. “Who told you this?”
“The one who’ll make you pay.”
And then the werewolf sank into the muddy bank and died.
Silver was expensive, but I liked to be certain. “Hey, Justin, hand me your machete.”
* * *
There was one last thing to do before leaving Lake Arrowhead, and that was have a sitdown with Deputy Thomas Black. Neither of us had slept much the night before, especially after we had taken tissue samples to send to the MCB for our PUFF bounty payment and buried our dead werewolf in an unmarked grave in the forest. When I had finally turned in to catch a couple of hours of sleep, Tom had still been busy reporting to his superiors that the wildlife consultants they’d sent had worked out and Lake Arrowhead’s killer cougar problem had been taken care of.
He looked exhausted now, sitting across from me in the little diner, but also happier than I’d ever seen him before. Finding out that you weren’t crazy was a good feeling.
“So what’re you MHI people gonna do now?”
“Head back to LA. Get back to work. The victim who lived, her name is Nicole Varney. The file said she’s a student at the University of Southern California and lives on campus.”
“Yeah, I interviewed her in the hospital. Nice girl.”
That made this so much worse. “I had Melanie call and try to get ahold of her. Nobody’s seen her for a few days.”
“Oh . . . ” He took a drink of his coffee. “So this werewolf business begins again?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know if she’s infected. She might be lucky.” I wouldn’t get my hopes up, but there was nothing wrong with letting someone else have that luxury. It was out of his jurisdiction. “We’ll look into it.”
“Let me know if you need any help again.”
I’d already given him the speech about what the Monster Control Bureau would do to him if he ever talked about any of this, but it never hurt to give a reminder. “Remember, none of this ever happened.”
“Or G-men will put me in a crazy house, or make sure I have an accident?”
“I’m not laughing. You think you’ve seen real evil because of your job, and I’m not saying you haven’t, but trust me when I say there’s a whole world of incomprehensible bad shit out there you really don’t want to know about . . . ” I pulled a business card out and slid it across the table to him. “And this is for if you decide you do.”
He picked up the card. “What’s this?”
“The number on front is our company headquarters, if you ever decide you want to change careers. Our hiring pool is limited to people who know monsters are real, and I think you’d be pretty good at this.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“You did what you could, with what you had, and when the truth came out you dealt with it. That’s a rarer skill than you realize.”
He stroked his rather impressive mustache. “Well, if you have some problems come up and you need some extra hands, you know somebody who can help without needing a lot of explanations first.”
“I might take you up on that. The number written on back of that card is our office in Pasadena if you ever have any other . . . wildlife problems.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Tom took the card and put it in the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Only, I’m content here. I like my job. Though I might take some time off.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Anything but camping.”