The Black Wolves of Boston, page 13
He had already torn the bathroom door off its hinges, broken his bed and reduced both his IV drip thingy and the automatic blood pressure machine to small pieces in similar panic reactions. He didn’t want to stay at the hospital after his vision of Jack. The hospital wasn’t hard to convince that breaking protocol and releasing him early would be best for everyone.
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone, so I left home. I could have gone to New York or Buffalo or stopped at Albany. Because of what Jack said in the vision, though, I came to Boston.”
“Your vision sounds like a projection through the pack magic,” Winnie said. “With the Boston pack reduced to two or three individuals, the ties between the wolves might be stronger than normal. Jack is a Thane and most likely Seth’s heir.”
Downstairs the front door chimed as a new customer came in.
Sioux Zee stood up. “My next appointment is here. It will be dark soon. If you’re taking him home, you should go soon.”
She started down the steps.
“Granny,” Winnie called after her. “Do you think Jack might still be alive?”
Sioux Zee paused to give her a sad look. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. If Joshua’s part of the Boston pack, then only Jack or Seth could have changed him. According to the news, the wolf that bit him is dead.”
“Oh pooh.” Winnie slid down in her chair to disappear under the table.
Joshua froze in place, unsure what to do. Girls were unknown to him except the ones that didn’t like him; they always just wanted him to go away. Older women were his mom and sister; neither ever turned to him for comfort. He felt like he should do something. He leaned sideways to look under the table.
Winnie huddled underneath, rubbing tears from her eyes. “I always thought that I was so weird because, when push came to shove, I’d be able to do something that no one else could do. That I could help. I could matter. Now something horrible has happened to someone I know—someone who was always nice to me—and this is all I can do?”
Winnie sniffed loudly and guilt stabbed through Joshua.
This was his fault; he just wasn’t sure how. There were people dead. Lots of them. He hated that they might have died because of him yet he didn’t have a clue why. He’d always been a dorky little nobody at school. The most interesting thing about him was his judo but he hadn’t been able to raise the money to compete at the national level. He wished he could remember what happened at the barn.
Witches had sent the huntsman after him. The ghost seemed to recognize him. Fred claimed that Jack had sent him to Boston. What was so special about him that all these weird things were after him? He wanted to know.
“You meditate on the ocean sound to contact the ghosts,” Joshua said. “I was trying to meditate when Jack talked to me. Maybe I can meditate and channel his spirit.”
He’d tried lots of quick meditations since he’d left the hospital, but nothing deep and focused. If this was a video game, though, the initial vision would have been an indication that certain keystrokes could recreate the ability. Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. B. A. Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! Channel werewolf ghosts. Achievement unlocked.
“Oh! Oh! That’s a marvelous idea.” Winnie crawled across the floor to his feet. “I’ll ride shotgun since you’ve never done it before.”
“Ooookay.” He wasn’t sure how she was going to do that.
She leaned up and took his hands. “I listen to the ocean because I imagine I’m a whale. I start out swimming just under the waves. The deep: dark below me. The surface: a shifting gleam above me. Take a deep breath.”
Joshua closed his eyes and breathed deep. Usually it wasn’t hard to meditate. He’d learned how when he started martial arts in second grade. When he closed his eyes, however, all the weirdness wanted to crowd in. Fred’s fresh grave scent. The rustle of wind through invisible leaves as the spirit guide moved around them. How the dead leaves of the hounds had crunched under his fingers when he grabbed hold of them. The cries of seagulls outside the windows. The screams of his classmates at the barn.
He struggled to relax. Breathe deep. Be calm. Find your center. Be in the now. Anything that happened before this moment, forget.
Another dozen deep breaths and he settled into the calm that meditation usually brought.
“Now slide down into the darkness,” Winnie whispered.
She gave him a slight tug and they seemed to fall downward, through the floor. He jerked and opened his eyes.
“It’s okay.” Winnie tightened her hold. Her hands were warm and soft.
He realized that he was growling softly. “It wasn’t like that at the hospital. I didn’t slide into the dark.”
“Can you remember what you did at the hospital? You lead; I’ll follow.”
He closed his eyes again. His mother clung fiercely to his hand as she sat beside his hospital bed. Her hands were surprisingly small, like she’d shrunk sometime during the nightmarish night. Her palms had been dry from the harsh soap that she used to strip engine grease off every night.
She had to be worried sick about him. He knew that she would have fought to the death to protect him. Against werewolves and witches, though, all she could have done was die.
Breathe deeply. Be calm. Exist in the now.
It took longer for him to find his center the second time.
In the dark stillness, Joshua became aware that Winnie was breathing in time with him.
At the hospital they’d wheeled him away from his mother’s anchoring presence into the stark cold room with the MRI machine. Once he was on the table, the technicians had moved out of sight, leaving him alone in the hospital gown that barely kept him decent. He suspected that since he was in the pediatrics unit, they’d given him a child-sized gown. It was purple with puppies romping on it. It was so short that he felt like he needed fig leaves to stay decent, especially when the female technician tucked pillows under his legs, canting up his knees.
He pushed that embarrassing memory away.
The MRI bed slid into the chamber. A moment later, a loud jackhammering noise started. He’d closed eyes tight and tried to flee inward. The way had been shadowed, but not completely dark. He felt like he was running through a thick forest. He didn’t know yet what he was; the wood seemed safe and welcoming.
Could he find his way back to the forest?
He focused; trying to remember. It had been so simple at the hospital. Just close his eyes and there it was. Of course that was before the black wolf showed up to freak him out.
Once he concentrated on the quality of the darkness, he realized that he’d found his way back to the shadowed forest. Night seemed to press close. He could still feel Winnie’s fingers laced with his. He could smell Fred hovering close. The two were with him in the woods.
Was Fred the reason it seemed so dark? Last time it seemed brighter, even though it had been late at night. He tightened his hold on Winnie’s hand and cautiously moved forward. What was this place? Where was it? Somehow it felt familiar, but meditating had never taken him to someplace so real. Was it because Winnie was with him? No, he’d been here at the hospital but the sense of déjà vu ran deeper than that.
Something gleamed in the distance. For a moment he thought it was a searchlight cutting through the darkness. He realized it was a massive gleaming animal racing toward them.
“Not good!” Joshua cried trying to backup. “Not good at all. Run!”
The beast hit him like a hot wave. There was a flashing impression of fur and muscle and a rumbling growl as loud as thunder. Then heat poured over him, into him, until he was drowning in the warmth.
He flailed wildly, snapping open his eyes. He lay on the wood floor of Sioux Zee’s tattoo studio. Winnie huddled in the corner furthest from him, eyes wide in the darkness. They seemed alone in the dim room but he could feel a massive foot pressing down on his chest, pinning him in place. The candle on the table flickered, throwing shadows on the far wall. And then the shadows moved independent of the flame. A massive head glanced at Winnie and then turned back to study him.
The ghost wolf standing on his chest—that was there but not there—filled the room, its back brushing the ceiling. Its panting blasted over him, warm and smelling of ancient forests. He could feel it staring angrily down at him.
“This isn’t what was at the hospital!” Joshua whispered to Winnie. “Can you make it go away?”
Winnie squeaked.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he muttered. The great head leaned close and he had the distinct impression that it was smelling him. “What is it?”
She whimpered in fear.
The ghost wolf glanced again at Winnie. A growl rumbled like thunder in the enclosed space. “Keep your hands off what is mine!”
The weight on Joshua’s chest vanished. The room brightened. The candle stopped flickering.
“Holy shit!” Joshua breathed. It seemed worth repeating. “Holy shit! What the hell was that? Is it gone? Are you okay? What was that?”
“The Wolf King!”
“The what?” Joshua said before remembering that Decker and Elise had talked about a Wolf King. “You mean the king of werewolves?”
Winnie nodded and kept nodding.
“Are you okay?”
The nodding became a violent “no.” “I think I peed myself.”
9: ELISE
The Wicker house was easy to find; Elise merely had to follow the caravan of vehicles heading down the narrow country road. It seemed as if the New Hartford Police Department had called in favors with every law enforcement officer in the state. The good news was that no Wicker could control this many people. Unfortunately, they’d only need one or two well-placed puppets who could command the rest of the herd.
The road went past the Sauquoit high school, three stories high with ten-foot-high glass windows. It looked surprisingly large and moneyed for such a small town. At some time in the past, the area had been well-to-do. Three or four hundred feet more and the caravan turned onto an even narrower street and stopped just short of a railroad crossing.
The Wicker house sat on a large parcel of land, set back from the street another hundred feet. A winding driveway led back to the two-story farmhouse with a large river rock chimney and a wrap-around porch. It was a modern house pretending to be something old. It was too small to house a large coven; its size confirmed that the property was a temporary base.
Yellow police tape kept the caravan from turning into the driveway. The police cars that she’d been following pulled onto the grassy shoulder, already cut deep with ruts.
A small media circus had gathered, unpacking satellite dishes and cameras. Elise tucked her Jeep between two production trucks. She had wondered why the Wickers were delaying the hunt. The witches obviously wanted a lot of people between them and the werewolf. A set start time maximized the turnout of monster fodder.
Elise wished that she could simply sit and wait for the Wicker to show up. She couldn’t kill the witch in front of so many police officers and expect to be able to walk away. It would get messy. Yes, when push came to shove, her family did lean toward “kill them all and let God sort them out.” It made the Grigoris’ lives much simpler. Heaven was a nice place; good people went there. Bad people got what they deserved.
It would piss off her grandmother, though, and that was to be avoided at all costs.
A cameraman spotted her as she climbed out of her Jeep. He’d been about to lift the camera to his shoulder. His eyes went wide and his pupils dilated. “Wow. Hello gorgeous! Who you are with?”
“I don’t date losers like you.” Insults were now her kneejerk reaction to how men acted around her. Depending on the guy, one or two dozen cutting remarks generally got them angry enough to actually see her. She didn’t like the type of person it was making her. Not that she was the sweetest person in the world to start with, but she was starting to feel like a weird cross between a swan and a spitting cobra.
“I meant your network.” He started to point the camera her way.
“Unless you want to eat that thing, do not point it at me.” She pulled her pistol and aimed it at the lens.
Really, she didn’t like that pulling a weapon was her first reaction. Or that her second reaction was thinking about pistol-whipping him and stuffing him into the equipment locker on his truck. Other women didn’t have to be this hostile—right?
“Okay! Okay! Not filming!” He jerked the camera off his shoulder and back-pedaled, bouncing off vehicles as he went.
She stalked across the road, muttering darkly. “Is it really too much to ask, God, for one person—beyond Decker—who won’t go brain dead every time they look me in the face?”
There was yellow tape where the front door had stood. The frame and part of the wall around it lay in the high-ceilinged foyer. The wolf had caught the warlock in the hallway just beyond it. Blood painted the walls and ceiling for eleven feet from a werewolf tearing the body to pieces. Eleven parts, to be exact, according to the coroner’s report that the U.S. marshal had shared with her.
Elise ducked under the tape and followed the blood trail. At the end of the hallway, the wolf had barreled into a big farm kitchen.
There had been something made of wood and blood sacrifice waiting for the wolf. The end result must have mystified the police. Sticks and leaves and something long dead littered every surface along with swathes of blood from the wounded wolf.
Something glinted among the dead leaves. Elise toed aside the dead foliage. It was a silver bread knife tied to a branch. The small-town police, overwhelmed by violent and bizarre massacres, had missed the silverware. Even if they’d seen it, they wouldn’t realize what it indicated.
The witches had known what was coming for them. They’d prepared.
So the werewolf wasn’t just wounded, it was poisoned. It wouldn’t heal until its wounds were washed clean with Earthblood. That explained why the Wickers knew that it had to be somewhere close by, nearly dead.
“Hey!” A male voice shouted at the end of the hall. “That’s a police line that you just danced under, Missy!”
“Interpol!” she shouted back, following the splattering of blood to the garage entry. Some of the coven had escaped while the construct bought them time. The garage door was smashed open from the inside and there were tire marks on the driveway, racing away from the house.
A man came stomping up the hallway toward her. “I don’t care which news agency you’re with, get back across the damn road and wait with the other vultures!”
“Interpol.” She pronounced it slowly and held up her badge. “As in international police. As in the United States Justice Department. As in federal agent. Interpol.”
“What?” He snatched the badge from her. He was a tall beefy man with a bulldoglike face. His nametag stated Chief R. Dietz. His uniform patch identified him as New Hartford Police Department. From what she’d been able to gather, Sauquoit didn’t have its own police. “French police don’t have jurisdiction here.”
Dietz studied her photograph and then glared at her. He could have been gay, but the lack of understanding of complex structures that he should know was a classic symptom of being under a witch’s power.
“I’m a United States federal agent who works on the behalf of the Attorney General and Homeland Security.” It was a greatly simplified version of the command structure in Washington, D.C. It usually required diagrams to explain who had control over what. The bureaucracy usually worked in the Grigoris’ favor since no one was ever sure who to complain to.
He frowned at the badge again. “What the hell does Interpol want with a simple murder case?”
Simple? Elise laughed despite the fact that her heart was racing, making ready for a possible do or die fight. “I’m investigating the trafficking of endangered species.”
“Trafficking? Like drugs?”
Oh, this man was ratcheted tight if he wasn’t following that.
“Illegal importing of animals on the endangered list. It’s possible that this is a critically endangered red wolf, or endangered Ethiopian wolf or a near-threatened maned wolf.”
“What the hell does that mean? Are you a tree hugger here to stop this hunt?”
“No, I’m trying to trace how this animal got here in the first place. Wolves are extinct in this area, so clearly someone brought it here.”
“We’ve looked for kennels and animal sanctuaries…”
“You’ve checked the registered ones. I’m looking for unregistered places with European ties.”
All bullshit but he nodded slowly, grasping what she was implying.
“Were you given ammo?” He held up two magazines for her. “Everyone should take one. It’s loaded for wolf.”
She took the nine-millimeter clip magazine and made a show of loading it into her pistol. He was working off a script. Like post-hypnotic suggestions, he’d keep to the script until the witch showed up to supervise the hunt. Obviously he’d been told to gather up a hunting party and arm them with silver. Short of knocking him unconscious and tying him up, Elise had no way to get him off script. Killing him would also work but that would be bad.
She desperately wanted to search the house for clues on what the Wickers intended to do with Joshua. The Wickers obviously thought he was still in the area. They were standing their ground to find him. As long as they thought he was in the Utica area, he was safe in Boston.
