Stark swore and punched the dash. These things were everywhere.
They were half a mile from the ambush before Mosher spoke. He was flushed with excitement. “We should stop here, try to cut through the forest on foot.”
“Negative. I saw at least two werewolves moving, plus the shooter, who had to be in human form. That’s scary good coordination for these beasts. As thick as that forest is, in these conditions? We’d be dead in ten minutes and never even see them coming.”
“We’ve got NVGs and thermal,” Mosher said.
“And they’ve got a million years of evolution, and that—” Stark waved his hand at the frozen landscape outside the cracked windshield—“is their element. Stalking prey in the woods is what they do! Regulations say that facing lycanthropes in wooded environments requires at least a complete fire team.”
“The next town is only a few clicks,” Mosher insisted. “I could run that in no time. Let me out, you head back to town and I’ll go for help.”
And leave me alone? Oh, hell, no. The kid was brave but incredibly stupid. “Regulations say that we can’t split up.”
Agent Stark wasn’t a coward. He’d done some remarkably brave things…when he was younger. This easy little job to earn some under-the-table PUFF had turned into a disaster, and he really didn’t feel like getting eaten for nothing. He’d been like Mosher once, full of piss and vinegar, but years of pushing paper in a soulless bureaucracy had sapped that youthful na?veté. He’d long ago accepted that he wasn’t a hero, he was a bureaucrat. The young guns like Mosher were the ones that got to risk their lives playing hero. Stark was management now.
His young partner must have taken Stark’s lack of response as hesitation. “We need to do something. People are dying!”
Stark sighed. He needed to take a different tack. Mosher was too earnest for his own good. “You’re right, Agent. And getting torn apart in the woods isn’t going to help them. Get us back to the hospital. We’ll do what you suggested earlier and protect these yokels.”
He obviously didn’t like it, and they drove on in stony silence, but like all good MCB agents, Gaige Mosher knew how to obey orders.
* * *
Earl Harbinger found himself in a tricky predicament. Normally he wouldn’t be too concerned being around someone newly turned into a werewolf. Worst-case scenario, they’d flip their lid and he’d have to deal with it with some good old-fashioned violence. But he was no longer in a position of strength. Before, if there was a sudden change, and he caught a surprise claw, he’d just tear the upstart’s head off and then heal up in short order. Now, if Heather wigged out on him, he’d probably be dead before he got his gun out. He wasn’t the king of the werewolves anymore. Now he was just another fragile human, and therefore he should do what any sensible human would do in his situation and promptly shoot her dead as soon as her back was turned. Instead, he found himself trying to comfort the distraught young woman turned killing machine because she was upset she’d eaten her dog.
“I’m pretty sure Otto had already been shot before you got to him,” Earl explained. “I’m sure that’s what set you off. He probably never felt a thing.”
Heather had managed to wipe off most of the blood, and she seemed relatively okay after spending the last ten minutes in the bathroom puking. She pushed past him and walked down the hall. “You think so?”
“Sure. Otherwise he would’ve just run from you. Dogs are smart like that. Besides, don’t beat yourself up about it. The first time I changed I ate a family of five.”
“That really doesn’t help.”
He followed her into the bedroom. Heather hadn’t specified what she was looking for, except that it was related to the amulet and the fact that the prisoner had said her grandpa had stolen it. Heather immediately went to rummaging through the back of her closet. With the power out, it was extremely dark back there, but she didn’t bother to turn on her flashlight, and Earl wasn’t about to point that fact out because it would probably just disturb her more.
Now that his vision seemed pathetic, Earl had to use his own flashlight to scan the walls. The room was more feminine than he’d expected for some reason, with frilly pillows, pastel colors, and scented candles. Maybe it was because the entire time he’d known her he’d only seen the tough side of the girl, but it was a little surprising. Also humanizing, but that didn’t exactly help along his thoughts about the potential need to hurry up and shoot her. His light fell on some portraits.
At first Earl thought the lady in the picture with Heather might have been the Queen of the Elves, since she was about the right size, as in morbidly obese, but she had bright red hair. The man standing next to her was dark and thin. “Your folks live around here?”
“Used to. They’re dead,” she answered, not looking.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been a rough couple years. Mom got sick first, not that she was exactly in good health before that. Dad wasn’t exactly the nursemaid type and really couldn’t handle it, so I ended up quitting my job and moving back here. I got a job at the sheriff’s department. It was supposed to be temporary. Crap.” There was a crash as Heather knocked something off a shelf. “Mom died, but then Grandpa got sick, so I ended up sticking around.…Then, right after Grandpa died, Dad…well…It’s complicated.”
“It’s really none of my business.”
“That’s okay. After Grandpa died, my dad changed. They weren’t close or anything, but Grandpa’s death really did something to him. Messed Dad up. Mom was gone. He started having all sorts of psychological problems, insomnia, and it got worse. He wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t get help. He got really depressed.…Shot himself last Christmas. So I guess it’s been almost a year now.”
That was a tough one. “My condolences.”
“Really screwed it up, too. He was in the hospital in a coma for weeks before he slipped away. He really should’ve asked me for advice. Heaven knows I’ve responded to enough suicides to know how to do it right.…Wow. That’s morbid. Sorry.”
Earl didn’t know how to respond to that.
“I guess I’m still a little angry at him. Sad, but bitter, too. Well, anyways, everybody is gone, but I don’t know…After Dad died, I just felt like I should stay here. I can’t explain what changed. You know, I moved away from Copper Lake as soon as I could when I was younger. I used to hate this place. But somehow I ended up right back where I started.”
“Life’s funny like that.” He moved to the next picture. “This your grandpa?”
Her head popped out of the closet. Heather had discarded her skullcap, and her hair hung in front of one eye. “Yep. That’s the famous Aksel Kerkonen.”
He was a weathered old man, scowling hard at the camera with his wiry arms folded. A gangly teenage girl stood next to him, and it was only the hair color that tipped Earl off that it was a much younger Heather in the picture. “He don’t look friendly.”
“He wasn’t.” Heather went back to looking. “He was a morose, bitter drunk, with an awful temper. He was kind of a local legend, since he kicked the crap out of roughnecks a third his age, got into a few knife fights, and the only reason I think he never went to prison is because everybody in town was too scared of him to testify.”
“You didn’t like him, I take it.”
She came out with a long wooden box and set it on the bed. “Oh, I didn’t say that. I loved Grandpa Aksel. I was about the only person he liked. The guy was a real character.” Heather opened the clasps and lifted the lid. “This was his. He was a sniper during the Winter War.”
Earl shined his flashlight onto the bed. The rifle was an old Mosin Nagant. “May I?” Heather nodded, and Earl lifted the long bolt action from the case. The wood had been worn smooth by hands and much use. The bolt worked easily for a Nagant, probably polished by a good smith at some point. No scope, which was odd by American precision-rifle standards, but scopes hadn’t been as good back then, and not nearly fog proof, which really mattered when you were fighting in the miserable cold, spitting distance from the Arctic circle. Earl knew his tools and could tell that this rifle had been used hard but well cared for. “M28.” He moved the receiver into the light. “Sako. 1939. The Finnish ones are supposed to be more accurate, I hear.”
Heather was removing items that had been stashed under the rifle and setting them on the bed. “You seem like somebody who knows guns.”
Earl shrugged. “Eh. I got shot by one of these once. Right in the kisser. Pow! That hurt.” She gave him a strange look. “It was a Russian version, though, back in ’45. Race to loot Hitler’s experimental occult bunker…Long story. Never mind. What’re you looking for?”
Heather held up a small book. “This belonged to Grandpa, too.” She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “I’d forgotten about this, but your Russian friend was asking about an amulet that Grandpa might have had. Check it out.”
He traded her the rifle for the book. It wasn’t that different than the little leather-bound journal in his own pocket. Earl held up his flashlight to the yellowed pages. The letters were rough, almost drawn rather than written. “I can’t read Finnish.”
“Me, either, and Grandpa was barely literate anyway, but look at the picture.”
Earl found the little ink drawing she was talking about. Aksel Kerkonen hadn’t been much of an artist, either. “It looks like a pointy blob with a hand in it.”
“That’s what I thought when I first found this after he died, but look at the line around the back. But if that’s a claw, then it’s what I was asked about earlier. Now I’m thinking that line means it’s supposed to be a necklace.” It could be the amulet. After all, Earl hadn’t got the best look at it while it had been ripping him to pieces. The claw in the picture was also short a finger. “And check this out.” She moved in close to him and turned the page. “What’s that look like to you?”
There were a bunch of stick figures, one of which had a gun, a couple of directional arrows, more words in Finnish, and a very cartoonish picture of an explosion. It took him a second to realize what he was looking at. The stick figure’s actions were numbered. “These are instructions.”
“Bingo!” Heather said excitedly. “The prisoner said Grandpa stole their amulet, and I’m betting this is about how he did it. Maybe it can help us get it back, and I can get cured.”
Earl realized that she was standing uncomfortably close, close enough to feel the feverish warmth coming from Heather’s skin. Distracted by the book, she brushed against his chest. Her hip touched his leg. Earl stepped back politely.