Maybe he was thinking about this the wrong way…
If Briarwood were to kill two werewolves, then Stark stood to make a lot more money, and if he didn’t have to pull the trigger on the deputy himself, that would save him from doing all that bothersome paperwork. He bounced the vial in his hand a few times. These tests aren’t always reliable. Nobody at headquarters would bat an eye if the test came up negative but the deputy turned anyway. That kind of thing had happened before.
“So, where to now?” Mosher asked, tapping his hand on the steering wheel.
If it turned blue, he’d just call Briarwood and then tell Mosher that it had come up negative. The werewolf would still get popped, society still got protected, only Agent Stark would actually get paid what he was worth for once. “Let’s see what there is to eat in this dump,” Stark ordered. He was feeling better already.
Earl Harbinger had driven another hundred miles after leaving Conover, before parking at a truck stop, pulling the brim of his ball cap over his eyes, and grabbing a few hours of sleep. He’d need his wits about him when he arrived.
Werewolves dream, just like anyone else. Yet he’d found that the closer it was to the full moon, the more his dreams turned to the fevered images of his animal state. Maybe it was early this time because of the nature of his current mission, but Earl awoke to the memory of running through the trees, hunting, killing, perfectly in his element. He took that as a good omen.
Back on the road, hours passed, fields turned into city, then back into fields, and then the view turned to trees. He had never been to upper Michigan before, but found it pretty. Hills and forest, just like home. But Alabamans were smart enough not to live someplace that got this damn cold. It seemed like whenever there was a break in the trees, there would be another abandoned mine hoist building, splintering wood and rusting steel constructions. Some of them were surprisingly tall. The industry of the area had fallen on hard times.
The clouds were thick and rolling in hard. Lights from the ground reflected against the snow in the air and gave the whole area a pinkish tint. It was just itching to snow hard. The hour was late by the time the GPS told him he’d reached his destination. The sign said that it had a population just over two thousand. There was a main street with one stoplight. The downtown area was made up of two-and three-story buildings, mostly brick, constructed back in the boom days. Many of them were empty now. There was a vast, pointy, Lutheran church across from the surprisingly big, ugly, Sixties-era high school. The cars parked along the street were humble. The people who lived here worked hard for a living. It was typical small-town America.
It positively stunk of werewolves.
Chapter 4
I didn’t want to die.
I had never been a quitter. That’s one of the things that made me such an effective Hunter: sheer absolute stubbornness.
Sure, I’d tried to do myself in that first morning when I’d woken up with a stomach full of human flesh. What sane man wouldn’t? But I’d managed to live with the curse for nearly a year, driven by a desperate mission of revenge, and the truth was, I didn’t want to die.
But it was my duty. I’d sworn an oath to my daddy that I would fight monsters to the end. The possibility of becoming one hadn’t really entered my mind, but then again Bubba Shackleford’s Professional Monster Killers had never come up against any werewolves before the one that got me. Undead were different. If you turned into an undead, that didn’t count; you weren’t a person anymore. Undead are just shells, with no souls, just going through the motions of living. But here I was, changed, the foulest of murderers, but I still considered myself human. I still felt like a person, but I knew the truth. I was a monster. And monsters had to be destroyed. By the time that bottle of whisky was half empty, the decision had been made. And this time I had a silver bullet to do it right.
The crumbling fort was isolated, but I heard the footsteps on the stone steps long before I saw whom they belonged to. I was polite enough to not want to share the sight of my fresh brains with some random passerby, so I put the Smith back under my shirt.
But the stranger wasn’t just passing through. The man was tall and very thin, with a beak nose, not too old but nearly bald, and wearing a black suit with a padre’s collar. He looked suspiciously vulture-like, but then again I was rather drunk. The priest said that he’d been sent to find me and that he was in dire need of my assistance.
“No offense, Father, but I’m a little busy right now,” I told him.
He bobbed his wispy head in agreement. “Of course. You were trying to have a contemplative moment before shooting yourself. I understand, but if I could have but a moment of your time first?” He looked like a local, but his English was excellent, hell, better than mine for sure.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes, but I have been watching you for quite some time. I know exactly what you are.”
I was certain that I’d never seen or smelled him before. I’d come here trailing a werewolf. I had been the predator. I had been the one running the night through the streets of the old city. If anyone had been following me, I would have seen them for sure. “Really? And what would that be?”
“Someone who bears a curse.” The priest dusted off a spot on the stone next to me and took a seat. “Someone who bears the mark of Cain.” He stopped, as if waiting for me to argue. “I’m sure you are aware that what you are contemplating is a terrible sin.”
“Yeah, yeah. Add it to the list. I’m going to hell. You got a point?”
“My impression is that you are a decent man who has had an unfortunate turn of events. I do believe that if I were to throw my life away, I would do it in a manner more useful to my fellow man. There is great nobility in sacrifice.”
I was drunk, but not that drunk. “I’m not really fit to become a man of the cloth. I’ve killed a whole mess of people…Ate a few of them.”
“Oh no, oh my, no.” The priest laughed until he started to choke. I’d never seen a vulture laugh before. “That is not what I had in mind.” It took him a moment to catch his breath. Apparently the idea of me finding that much religion was downright hilarious. He watched the sunrise with me for a while before making his pitch. “I know of a village in need of help.”
“What kind of help?”
“The kind that will almost certainly get you killed in the process.”
Heather was just getting ready to go to work when she was startled by a knock at the front door. She had just finished securing the Velcro straps of her much-hated bulletproof vest. Hated may have been a strong word for something designed to save her life, but the vest was uncomfortable, annoying, and made her look dumpy. It was also mandatory. At least it was a princess- cut vest, which was a nice way of saying that it didn’t squish her breasts like the one she’d been issued in Minneapolis. Heather threw on her green uniform shirt and started buttoning.
Even though the old Kerkonen family home was right in the middle of town, she didn’t get very many visitors, and on the rare occasions that she did, Otto usually warned her a long time before they got up the driveway. Normally her old, three-legged, retired police German shepherd would be bouncing around the living room, shedding everywhere, eager at the prospect of company, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Some guard dog you are,” Heather muttered.
There was a fearful answering whine from under the kitchen table. She spotted her dog backed into the farthest corner, his head down, ears flat, obviously afraid. His black eyes were fixed on the front door.
“What’s wrong with you?” Otto hadn’t been a particularly well trained K9 even before he’d been retired. Copper County never had much of a budget, so when the chief decided they needed a dog, they’d bought Full Otto the Uber Hund from a second-rate trainer. He’d been relatively useless to the department, except the kids loved him at the DARE events. She’d kept him ever since he’d chased a tennis ball in front of a snow plow and ended up as Otto the Amazing Tripod Dog.