Something scratched again.
Could the damn fool writer have forgotten something and come back for it? No, they had a special knock that Zeno would give to show it was him. He didn't want anybody else getting close to Abe before he had the exclusive story all written and handed over to the editor. That was the whole idea of hiding up here in the Whitaker cabin where nobody had come in years.
Scratch. Scratch.
You don't suppose the widow Whitaker would of told somebody they were up here? Not likely, since she didn't know what the fool city man wanted with her broken-down cabin and was just glad to get the ten bucks Zeno offered her.
Thump.
There was sure as hell something outside the door. Well, it wouldn't hurt to take a tiny peek. Zeno had bored a hole in the door at eye level and stuck a patch of leather over it so he could look out in case anybody came sniffing around.
Abe went over, lifted the leather patch, and put his eye to the hole. He had a full two seconds for his brain to register the fact that he was looking into another eye of the most terrible fiery green.
Then the door splintered inward like it was dynamited.
Abe staggered backwards, knocking over the card table with Zeno's typewriter on it and stumbling among the empty beer cans on the floor. The thing that came at him had to bend down to get its head through the doorway. Even inside the cabin the thing's pointed hairy ears brushed against the ceiling. The terrible black-lipped muzzle had a wet, just-born look. And the teeth. My God, the teeth. Abe Craddock vividly recalled what those teeth had done to Curly Vane, and all his heroic fantasies dissolved before the roaring reality.
"No, don't! No, don't! No, don't!" Abe cried. He might as well have appealed to the wind.
His back thumped against the opposite wall of the cabin and he could retreat no farther. A voice he did not recognize as his own whimpered in his ear.
The beast paused before him, its mighty chest twice the girth of Abe's own. The powerful jaws worked up and down. The beast seemed to savour the helplessness of the man before it.
When the beast struck, it was faster than Abe Craddock's eyes could follow. He was intent on those terrible teeth when it struck out at him with a forepaw. The razor talons ripped four parallel gashes down the front of him from sternum to pubic bone.
For an instant Abe felt nothing. He looked down stunned at the slashes through his T-shirt, his jeans, his jockey shorts, and the fatty flesh beneath. Then the pain came. And the blood.
The blood oozed at first, then bubbled out of him, splashing the bare wooden floor where he stood. Abe clutched at himself, trying to hold his intestines in place. But they bulged and coiled out over his hands like a nest of wet red snakes.
The beast let him scream for a while, as his legs gave out and he sank to the floor in a pool of his own blood and guts. Abe saw the gaping mouth come down toward him. Felt the teeth clamp on his head. Heard the crack of his skull…
Derak curled himself on the ground near the pile of his clothes and focused his will on the shape change. The transformation from beast back to man held none of the wild joy that was a part of becoming a wolf. Ideally, there should be a full, uninterrupted night to let the tension ease and change back gradually. When it had to be forced and speeded up, the changes to the body were painful in the extreme.
However, there was no help for it now. Derak had a mission, and it was only partly complete. He had set himself the task of returning Malcolm to his own people before the boy could do irreparable harm to himself or others of his kind. If along the way he could destroy some human garbage like Abe Craddock, it would add pleasure to his task.
Derak's body shuddered. He ground his teeth against the pain. The internal organs shifted and jumped under his skin. His skeleton cracked as the bones returned to human form. The body hair vanished as though sucked back into the hide. The ears shrank and rounded off, the muzzle pulled in, the killing teeth receded into the harmless molars and incisors of a man.
Slowly, slowly, the pain eased. Derak moved, straightening his body, testing his limbs and extremities. He shivered with the cold on his naked flesh.
As he pulled his clothes back on, Derak froze at a sound from the road below and ducked behind a bush. The little orange car chugged into the clearing and stopped. The man from the city climbed out, bringing with him a half-case of beer and a crinkly bag of chips. Derak watched as the man laboured up the path with his burden toward the cabin. The wise thing would be to destroy him, but the blood lust was stilled, and Derak had no wish to kill now without reason.
He waited until the city man had lumbered past the bush where he crouched, then he loped silently down the trail to the car. The door was unlocked. He tore away a fibreboard panel beneath the dash and found the ignition wires.
At the top of the trail the man from the city had seen the shattered remnants of the door. He dropped the beer and the bag of chips and walked stiff-legged toward the cabin. Derak stripped the wires with a tough thumbnail and twisted them together.
By the time Louis Zeno staggered out of the cabin, white-faced, with his mouth agape in a silent scream, his little orange car was turning onto the road toward the town of Pinyon.
As he drove, Derak pulled tissues from a carton on the dash panel and wiped away what he could of the blood and mud from his face. He was a fastidious man, and it made him uncomfortable not to bathe after a killing. However, this time the change back had to be done so fast there was no time.
Derak's mind had not completely reoriented, and as soon as he had a chance, he pulled the car off into a sheltered spot alongside the road next to an Exxon station. He was startled to see only then that the backs of his hands were still thickly overgrown with hair. He tucked the hands away out of sight, leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and let himself slip into a light doze.
He awoke some time later, refreshed and alert. He rubbed his hands front and back to be sure that the change was now truly complete. Only then did he realize he had brought the little car to a stop almost directly across from the office of La Reina County's sheriff.
Derak immediately choked down an impulse to panic. If anyone were still looking for a man of his description after the wild werewolf tales that had clouded the killing of Dr Qualen, they would hardly expect him to be sitting in a car parked almost under the sheriffs nose.
Using mental techniques learned from those who had travelled his road before, Derak settled into a quiet watchfulness that had protected his kind through the ages.
A small, square car pulled into the parking area before the sheriffs office. A young woman got out. The doctor. Derak had followed closely the events in Pinyon, and he knew that she, of all the people here, was the most anxious to find Malcolm. If anyone could lead him to the boy, it would be she.
Derak slid lower in the driver's seat and watched as the young woman got out and went into the office.
Chapter Fifteen
Deputy Roy Nevins was alone in the sheriffs office when Holly entered. She barely recognized the man. Deputy Nevins's uniform was spotless and pressed, complete to the military creases in the shirt. His boots, belt, and holster were shined. He was freshly shaved, and had obviously just had a haircut. He was even making an effort to hold his stomach in.
"Morning, ma'am," he said, getting to his feet. His speech seemed to have softened into more of a Western drawl.
Remarkable, Holly thought, what a touch of fame will do.