Something wasn’t right about this one, and it wasn’t just the fact that he was batshit crazy and violent. When she’d heard Bill screaming earlier, she’d come in, yanked the prisoner off, sprayed him good, and then, when he hadn’t sat his happy ass down like she’d asked, she’d pelted him with her baton. On the paperwork, she’d called it a pain-compliance technique, and the first few hits to the arms and legs probably had been, but the last one that she’d put alongside his head had been because he’d pissed her off.
Heather was the only female officer in a testosterone-soaked small town filled with unemployed miners. She wasn’t a bully and actually really disliked hurting anyone, but she’d made a career out of not messing around. She wasn’t nearly tough as everyone thought she was, but as long as the local troublemakers thought she was tough, it made life a lot easier. Heather tried to avoid confrontation but she never hesitated to get physical if the job required it. That ASP hit to the face had finally taken the fight out of the guy. Since he’d been wrestling one of her friends, she felt that the nasty welt she’d given him last night had been earned.
The prisoner finally seemed to realize that she was there and turned his head slightly to watch her through squinty eyes, still rocking. Something was odd. It took her tired mind a second to realize what was wrong. There was no bruise on his face. In fact, there was no sign that he’d been struck at all, and she’d really nailed him. Heather walked a few more feet along the bars, just to make sure that she wasn’t remembering wrong and maybe she’d got him on the other side. Still nothing.
Weird. She should have been thankful there was no bruise, because with her luck the prisoner’s brother was probably a civil rights attorney or something, but instead she found herself creeped out. She remembered exactly how hard she’d struck him, and there definitely should have been some evidence of it.
“What’s your name?” she demanded. “It’s hard to help you if we don’t know who you are.”
The rocking stopped. The man paused, as if listening to something in the distance. He smiled, and Heather was astonished to see how perfectly white and straight his teeth were. For some reason she’d been expecting him to have bad teeth. The man looked right through her, and the blankness of the gaze was simply unnerving. “You’re pretty.”
In normal, polite company, she might have said thank you. This company was neither normal nor polite. Here, it was simply uncomfortable. Agreeing with crazy people only reinforced the delusions, and disagreeing only got them riled up. It was better just to stick to business. “What’s your name?” she asked again.
The man slowly rose from the bed. The springs creaked. There was something unnatural about the movement, as if he was far too graceful for someone of his size. “You’re lucky to be so pretty. Does he like redheads? I don’t know. We don’t have any redheads. He’ll probably want to keep you for himself. He’s selfish like that.”
She should have walked away and just gone home, maybe stopped by the florist first to pick up a bouquet for Buckley, but she knew that she definitely shouldn’t be talking to this man. There was just a sense of wrongness about him, but the question came out before she could stop herself. “Who is?”
The prisoner cocked his head to the side. “The Alpha, of course. He picked this place special, you know. They’ll all be dead soon. It begins here. The snow is coming, then everything changes. Then it’ll be like an avalanche. You can’t stop an avalanche. You’ll probably be one of the lucky ones that he’ll keep. Everyone else gets harvested.” His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply, tilting his head back, like he was drinking in the air. “But you…you smell nice.” His eyes grew wide with realization, and the blank look was suddenly replaced with one of desperation. “Your scent! You’ve got the same blood as the one he’s looking for!” Heather stepped back instinctively as the prisoner flung himself hard against the bars. “Where is it? He has to have it!” Spittle flew from his lips as he reached for her. “Koschei’s treasure! Where did the thief hide it? Where?”
Having finally had enough nonsense for one day, Heather turned and left the cells. The lunatic continued shouting at her, but she just kept on walking, mentally damning bears and crazy people, both.
Agents Stark and Mosher arrived in Copper Lake before sunset. The hospital had been easy enough to spot as it was one of the larger buildings in town. They’d used some of their many fabricated government IDs to lie their way in, take their sample, and get back out.
“What a hole,” Stark muttered as they walked outside. It was miserably wet. The weather report said it was going to turn to snow. Sitting in the Suburban for the long ride had made his old knee injury, received while chasing a stupid Bigfoot, act up. He unclipped the CDC ID from his coat and stuck it back in his pocket.
“I don’t know,” Mosher said. “This place used to be a lot bigger. They had a thriving mine business up here. The town used to have a lot more people, but then there was a big accident. The mining company went out of business. Lots of people lost their jobs. Everything kind of dried up after that. The place never really recovered.”
“How do you know this crap?”
“I checked the Internet after you said where we were going. And the people here do seem really friendly. The town has just had some hard times.”
Just like a jarhead to stick up for a bunch of hillbillies. “It’s a shit hole,” Stark pronounced with finality. This was the kind of place that he hated working in. When he had to cover up activity in a city, it was easy. People disappeared or died violently there all the time. Out here, it got tougher. Everybody knew each other, and they all liked to talk. Good thing there were wild animals to blame things on.
Agent Mosher was young and not quite educated on when to shut up. “Well-”
“Shit hole!” Stark snapped. He was in an especially foul mood because Grant Jefferson had neglected to mention that the victim was a cop. Offing a regular infected was one thing, but offing a cop was something entirely different. For one thing, it caused more paperwork. “This part of the country is only good for growing trees and gambling at the Indian casinos.”
“Yes, sir,” Mosher replied as he got into the driver’s seat of their government Suburban.
The primary responsibility of the MCB was keeping the existence of monsters secret. Most survivors could be intimidated into staying quiet. The stupid were taken care of in various ways, either through making them look like crackpots, or, if that didn’t work, then through more extreme measures. MCB agents were granted a lot of flexibility in dealing with that kind of problem. Stark liked to call it his license to kill.
So if this Deputy Buckley was infected by a werewolf, then Stark had every legal right in the world to put a silver bullet in him. But then the three other cops that had been sitting in the waiting room would probably end up shooting him. Which meant that if the test came back positive, he’d have to go talk to the sheriff and fill him in about the complete mission of the MCB, which would require paperwork, and then go kill the deputy, which would require even more paperwork. Stark hated paperwork.
He studied the glass vial in his hand. It was a werecreature field-test kit. The solution was a pinkish red from the drop of Buckley’s blood dissolving in it. It took up to a few hours for the chemical reaction to work. If it stayed red, then the deputy was clear, and if it was a false alarm he would only have to do a little bit of paperwork. If it turned blue, he’d have to do a lot of paperwork.
Stark had been doing this a long time, though. He’d looked at the extent of the unconscious man’s injuries and had spoken briefly with some of the cops who’d been to the scene. His gut told him that it was a werewolf. Which meant that there was one in the area, and since there were clear bite marks on the victim, on the next full moon there would be two.