Chapter 5
The padre was the kind of man who kept his cards close to the vest. He didn’t say too much about this supposed job, except that my odds of living through it were infinitesimally small, and who better to fight a monster than a monster? He would not say how he’d found me, how he had managed to avoid being detected while he’d watched me, or how he even knew what I was to begin with.
The last night of the full moon had passed. I had time. I had nothing better planned except catching the express train to hell, so why not go along for the ride?
We traveled across the big island. There was a small fishing boat waiting on the south coast. It took us to a little island named Cayos de Tiburon.
“There is a village on the other side of the island. My church is there. My people have been terrorized by something from the sea. It has carried off many of us. We are a simple folk, who make our living from the ocean, but since the creature has come, the fishermen are afraid to go out. It is slowly killing our village.”
“Why don’t you just get a few men with rifles and wait for it to show up?” I asked.
“We’ve tried. It is too clever. It only comes onto dry land when it can attack the unarmed and helpless. Apparently it has felt the sting of bullets before and does not appear when we are ready. It looks like a dumb beast, but it is very clever. It is huge, with the head of a shark and the tentacles of a squid. It is savage and pulls its victims apart before devouring their flesh, unless it carries them off to its underwater caves. The Indians call it the luska.”
“So, you want me to wait on the beach for this luska thing to show up to eat me, and I kill it with my bare hands, or at least injure it enough while it’s eating me so that it don’t come back?”
“That would be most helpful.”
That silver bullet was sounding better and better.
The beach was tranquil. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was totally at peace. I was about to die, but it was with a purpose. The moon was bright overhead, just a sliver off of full, but enough that the Hum was only background noise. I took off my boots and my shirt, and crouched on the edge of the surf, crunching sand between my toes and waiting. I’d left my revolver with the padre before he’d sailed away. We’d see how smart this critter was. My heightened survival instincts were balanced with that burning desire for the challenge of the hunt. I’d found balance.
It didn’t take long for the luska to spot me, a single, helpless, meal. I could sense it in the waves, studying me. I was alone and seemed feeble. My nose picked it up first, just a hint of ocean rot, a bit stronger than its surroundings. It was old and terrible. It watched me for half an hour, recognizing that I wasn’t the same as its regular prey but not understanding just what a werewolf was capable of, even in man form.
Finally the luska made the decision that I was food. It hurled itself out of the surf and onto the sand, a giant black glistening mass. The front end was that of a giant shark, mouth chock-full of gleaming teeth and a little red eye on each side of its great big head. Its rear half was a mass of squid tentacles. The two longest tentacles ended in jagged barbs that looked almost like long-fingered hands. The hands were used to pull its huge weight forward, while several of the smaller tentacles shot back and forth, propelling it up the beach right at me.
Now that was a death worthy of a Hunter.
* * *
Heather had only been on her shift for a few minutes, still preoccupied with thoughts of the strange Mr. Peterson, when a big, black, jacked-up Ford truck had blown past her, doing at least forty-five in a twenty-five and ran right through a Stop sign without even a flicker of brake lights. Back to work. She’d automatically turned on the siren and pulled out behind the truck.
It had started snowing. Gently so far, but the thick sky told her that it was going to be a real dumper. The roads were still okay, but it was always the assholes in the biggest trucks who assumed that four-wheel drive gave them the magical power to drive too fast on slick roads, physics be damned. The truck had Alabama plates, of all places, so it was probably somebody who had no comprehension of how to drive on ice, either. Damned tourists. It was either ticket the jackass now or pull him out of a ditch later.
She’d already called in the plate number by the time the driver saw the red and blues flashing in his mirror. The truck pulled over at the corner of Quinn and Red Jacket. She got out and approached the driver’s side window cautiously. Copper County was a quiet town, but she prided herself on being a professional.
The window was already down. Somebody must like the cold. The driver was an average-looking guy. Caucasian. Early forties. Light-colored hair, groomed short from what she could see sticking out from under his hat. Average build. Beat-up leather jacket. Hands on the steering wheel. The truck put him up rather high, but if he had gotten out she was willing to bet that he would stand just over six foot. She’d been doing this a long time. He turned his head toward her with a polite nod. A few days of stubble. Some gray in there. Hard jaw. Not much fat on this one. Lean. Impression of a tough guy. Eyes an odd shade of blue. Mildly annoyed expression. “Evening, officer. Was I going a little fast?”
He even sounded like he was from Alabama, nothing overt, but the accent was there. Heather kept her tone firm. “Yes, you were. Are there any drugs or weapons in the vehicle you need to inform me about?”
“Negative, ma’am.”
“License and proof of insurance, please. Did you even see that Stop sign you just ran?”
The man sighed. “No, ma’am.” His hat had a green happy face with horns on it. Probably some Alabama sports team she’d never heard of, but the only sport she ever watched was hockey, and she doubted very much that Alabama had hockey. After a moment of rummaging through the center console, he passed over the paperwork and his license. “I suppose I was a bit distracted.”
“Well, Mr.”—she glanced at the license—“Harbinger, you need to slow it down and pay more attention.” Thanksgiving had only been a couple of days ago. People were still eating leftover turkey. Since she knew just about everyone in the county, she probably knew whom he’d been visiting. “What brings you to Copper Lake?”
He had a real strange look on his face when he responded. “I’m passin’ through. Never seen this part of the country before.”
“Uh-huh…Wait here.” Heather returned to her car to run the stupid tourist’s license.
* * *
“Damn it,” Earl muttered to himself after the lady cop sauntered off. He’d been driving around, sniffing the air, trying to pick up a trail. The falling snow was damping the multiple scents, plus the wolfsbane in his pockets wasn’t making it any easier to get a fix. He’d let himself get distracted.
But one thing was for sure…He watched the cop in his mirror. She was certainly human, but she had the smell of werewolves on her. One was stronger but unfamiliar, but the other…She’d been near Nikolai earlier. It was really faint, but it was there. He hadn’t touched her—it would have been stronger then—but he’d been close recently. The scent brought back memories. It felt like there should have been a flood of memories, but because of Rocky, it was only a trickle and a sense of absence, loss, and a burning desire to tear Nikolai’s throat out.
He watched the cop car in the mirror until snow covered the glass. Not a bad-looking woman as far as he could tell with her so bundled up against the cold. He did have to chuckle at the stupid question about if there were any drugs or guns in the vehicle. Were criminals dumb enough to actually answer that truthfully? Earl had brought plenty of both. Out of view under the camper shell he had enough weapons to overthrow a Third-World nation and narcotics sufficient to knock out an elephant. The tranquilizers were in case he was out around the full moon and couldn’t make it into the time-locked steel cage that took up half the truck’s bed. Neither option was as nice as his cell back at the compound, but the portable cage beat the hangover from the sedatives.
The cop came back a minute later and handed over his license and a yellow carbon copy that read violation in big black letters across the top. “So much for getting off with a warning.”
Her uniform coat was a giant puffy green monstrosity with an embroidered yellow badge. A black knit cap hid her hair, and her cheeks were rosy from the cold. She was already coated in falling snow. “I only cited you for the stop sign. You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood. I can throw the speeding on there too if you want. Twenty over is a pretty hefty fine,” she stated flatly. The cop had fine features, a nose that was a little too big to be perfect, green eyes, and the hair that had strayed out from under the cap was a dark red. He decided that she could be pretty if she actually smiled, but she didn’t strike him as the smiling type. Human scents always told a story. She wore the smell of workaholic stress, was healthy despite a lack of sleep, lived alone, had a dog, and had eaten Oreos and Diet Mountain Dew for dinner.
Asking where she’d bumped into a former KGB assassin was out of the question. Nikolai could be masquerading as anyone. By most standards, Nikolai spoke better English than Earl did. “You get many strangers in these parts?” he asked.
“Not usually, until it’s good snowmobile weather, but lately we seem to be swimming in them.”
“Really…What for?” Where did you meet him?
But apparently she wasn’t the small-town type that liked to gossip about strangers. The cop just shrugged. “Just slow it down. You’d better be more careful. Your behavior could hurt somebody.”
That was the general idea. But he just nodded politely. Knowing where she’d met his enemy could be a real advantage, so he tried one last time before she had a chance to walk away. “What do you say I buy you some dinner and you tell me more about your lovely town?”