The Alpha casually reached out, caught an ankle, and pulled. The lesser werewolf hit the steps with a meaty thud. The Alpha lifted him effortlessly and hurled him against the wall. Corrugated metal collapsed around Nikolai.
“Well, well, well…Comrade Nikolai Petrov, scourge of the steppes, Stalin’s favorite werewolf, the ghost of Koh Valley. Killer of man, woman, and child. It’s a real pleasure to meet you in person. You’ve got no idea how much I’ve heard about you over the years. According to my mom, you were a cross between Freddy Krueger and the Boogeyman. I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed. You don’t seem to live up to the hype.”
Nikolai coughed as he dislodged himself from the wall. He stumbled but caught himself on a piece of scaffolding. “I’ve come to challenge you.”
The Alpha laughed. “I’ve been waiting.”
Nikolai spit a mouthful of blood onto the concrete. “You killed my Lila.”
“Was that her name? I forgot. Tough girl. It took her forever to die. She was a screamer, though. I never thought she’d shut up. That’s why I pulled her tongue out, in case you were wondering.”
Nikolai charged. The Alpha let him come. Fists flew. The Alpha just moved around them. It was amusing to watch the effort. It was like a petulant child trying to lash out at its parents. He could smell Nikolai’s fury, his desperation, but under that was a hint of fear, and as none of the blows landed, the fear grew. It was delicious. He decided to see if he could taste more of that.
He struck Nikolai down. Bones cracked against the pavement. The Alpha stepped back and casually removed his hat. He carefully hung it on the end of the handrail. The hat had been a Christmas gift from his mother. His overcoat followed, and he was careful not to wrinkle it as he hung the items over the railing. “You want a challenge? Let’s do this right. I’ll give you time to get ready.”
The shotgun blast hit him at the base of his spine. The silver burned briefly before his hyper-regeneration shoved the buckshot pellets out of his flesh. He turned to see the new female werewolf, twenty yards away, pumping her shotgun.
“Nice poncho, Rambo.”
She pulled the trigger again, so he moved from the path of the spreading silver cloud. Taking the warm shotgun barrel in one hand, he ripped it away from her. The look on her pretty face told him she hadn’t seen that coming. “I’ll deal with you in a second.” He took the shotgun in both hands and struck her with it like it was baseball bat. The wooden stock shattered, and the female went bouncing across the ground.
He tossed the now-bent shotgun aside. “Where were we, Petrov? Oh, yeah. You were challenging my supremacy.”
The Russian was transforming, bones twisting, skin stretching. The Alpha calmly removed his ruined shirt, kicked off his shoes, and waited. Nikolai’s change only took half a minute, but to the Alpha it seemed to drag on forever. His challenger’s body needed to burn its own energy to fuel the transformation. The Alpha knew that the amulet would fuel his instantly.
Nikolai was ready. He rose, snarling, filled with fury. The Alpha had to admit that before he’d found the amulet, he would have thought of Nikolai as an impressive, even fearsome specimen of the lycanthropic species. A century old, hardened by wars, torture, and driven mad by insatiable bloodlust, Nikolai should have been terrifying.
But not anymore. The Alpha didn’t even bother to change. He yawned theatrically. “You’re not even worth my time.”
Nikolai hurled himself at the Alpha.
Stark was pacing back and forth. MCB headquarters was barely audible. He thought it sounded like Agent Archer on the other end, but he had one flickering bar, so it was really hard to tell.
“Copper Lake, Michigan. Werewolves, damn it. Hundreds of werewolves!” he shouted.
Buzz-crackle. “-wolves? Status of-” Hiss-pop.
“Shit!” Stark kicked a tree. Sadly, that just caused a cascading chain reaction of cold snow to break loose from the upper branches to fall on him. A nasty bunch of ice managed to go down the back of his collar, slide down the inside of his shirt, and lodge in his underwear. “The status is FUBAR!”
The bitter old immigrant had gone off to the side and found a log to sit on. He seemed to be deep in thought.
“-rk.” The static was unbearable. Stark had no idea what the agent on the other end had heard so far. “-for extraction?”
“Huh? I can’t hear you. Mosher is dead. Most of the town’s dead. I need help now.” He remembered Harbinger’s warning, but it had been unnecessary. Stark didn’t want the MCB to have the Air Force bombing the place until he was out of here himself. After that? Screw them. But not before he was safely on a flight home. “I need reinforcements. No bombing.”
Crackle-buzz. “Request bombing? Please veri-” And then nothing.
Stark screamed in frustration. “No! No bomb!” But the call had dropped. He hit the speed dial for headquarters and then wildly waved the phone overhead like it was a magic talisman that could ward off evil. “I lost my connection!”
“Connection…” Aino muttered. “Huh…I just thought of something.” He pulled the old Finnish journal out of his coat and flipped to the end. It was a good thing no werewolves came up on them at that moment, since Stark was running in circles trying to get a signal while Aino buried his nose in a book.
“Well…This sucks.” Agent Stark gave up and took a seat on the log next to his only remaining companion. For all he knew, everyone else was dead.
Aino closed the book. “I just figured something out. They’re gonna do it wrong. We’ve got to warn them.”
“Probably too late,” Stark said. “We need to get out of here before my people blow us all up.”
“No,” Aino stated with grim determination. “Come on. We can still catch Earl. If I don’t, Heather’s going to die. I know why she’s different than the others.”
Stark just shook his head. They were screwed either way. It was a little overwhelming. He hadn’t been this tired since BUD/S, and he’d been a lot younger and had actually given a damn back then. He should have been at home, sleeping in his warm bed. He should have caught his daughter’s concert, even if it would have been terrible. He never should have tried to game the system to score PUFF money, and now he was going to die for it…Oh well. Being nuked sure did beat having fish monsters lay their eggs in you, so it could always be worse.
“Mr. Stark,” Aino pleaded. “I need you to watch my back. We have to reach them. The spell is all wrong. Aksel figured that out afterward…Come on! Get up. I shoulda died a long time ago, buried in that mine right over there. Only Aksel Kerkonen risked his life to drag me out. I owe him, and I never paid him back. So now I owe his grandkid. She’s a good girl, and she’s about to lose her soul if we don’t go get them.”
Stark just sighed. He hadn’t really been listening to the old hillbilly’s blathering. Instead he’d just realized that being nuked was only better if you were close to the impact area. Otherwise it meant a lingering death from radiation poisoning. Bummer.
Aino tried a different tact. “You want to reach your pals?”
“Obviously.”
“I know where you’d probably get great reception.” Aino pointed through the trees at the tallest thing in view. Stark followed his finger to the top of Number Six.
Heather was facedown in the snow. She rolled over and blinked up at the light. Her red hair was spread in a halo around her aching head. Her ears were ringing. She reached up in time to feel the skin crawling closed over a gash in her skull. Her fingers came away covered in blood.
“Why, you…” Heather sat up. The dizziness was passing as the bones of her skull fused back together. “Dirty, miserable…” She let the anger free, and it washed away the rest of the pain. “Horrible, awful, worthless son of a bitch!”