* * *
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!”
Her Winchester was there on the ground. The stock was broken and the barrel was bent into an L, but she wouldn’t have picked it up even if it was still in working order. She was going to rip this bastard apart with her bare hands.
Nikolai had changed completely. She’d never seen his werewolf, but she had no problem recognizing him. His hair was dark, his form sleek. The power, speed, and ferocity was apparent, but it wasn’t doing him a lick of good against the Alpha.
The Alpha was still in human form. He’d stripped to the waist and seemed to be enjoying himself while easily avoiding Nikolai’s rending claws and snapping jaws. It was as if he’d appear, then move so quickly that he just reappeared in another place. Heather blinked, but it wasn’t her head injury that was causing that effect. He was just that fast.
One human hand caught Nikolai’s wrist and wrenched it back until it snapped. The Alpha’s foot lashed out and caught Nikolai’s ankle. Heather cringed as bones shattered. Nikolai fell, held up only by the Alpha’s whim. He tried to bite the Alpha, but the man just punched Nikolai in the chest hard enough to leave a dent. Blood sprayed from between Nikolai’s jaws as he hit the ground.
Nikolai lay there, gasping, as his chest gradually reinflated. The Alpha turned to her with a confident smile. “Hi. I’m surprised to see you back up and around already. But you’re something special. I can see that…You’ve very special.” Heather’s knees turned to water. She felt dizzy and flushed. The Alpha’s voice was so soothing.
“I can smell it in your blood. You’re something different. You’ve got a birthright, too. Just like me, but you’re not the challenge, either. What’s your name?”
“Go fu…fu…” She couldn’t finish the insult. She was just too tired. Her eyelids weighed a hundred pounds each. She just wanted to curl up someplace warm and go to sleep.
“What’s your name?” he asked again.
Heather wanted nothing more than to make him happy. He was simply beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world. It was understandable now why his followers were so fanatical. He was beautiful, and he wore the moon around his neck. The Alpha was positively radiant.
And that radiance had murdered half her town….
The anger came boiling back, and the heat of it burned away the haze. Rage was her anchor. He was trying to hypnotize her. Hell with that. “My name’s Deputy Heather Kerkonen of the Copper County Sheriff’s Department. But you”—she spread her arms as she felt the rage turn into strength; she uncurled her fists as her fingers stretched into knives—“you can call me death.” She screamed as she rushed him.
“Nice!” the Alpha said. One hand shot out and hit her right in the throat. She slashed his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. His fingers crushed off her air. “Cheesy line, but a good try. Fiery. I like that! I’ve got a way with the opposite sex. You can say it runs in the family. So it’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman resist me like that. I’m going to enjoy our time together.”
Heather thrashed, but he was far too strong. He flipped her around and dragged her in tight. Her back was pressed against his chest. His nose pressed against her hair as he drank in her smell. Blood was leaking from his arms where her nails sliced, but the Alpha didn’t seem to care. “Ahh…I understand now. So that’s why you’re so different from my other new children. Your grandfather took something with him when he touched the amulet. A little bit of the forerunner’s spirit joined his. He must have passed it on to you.”
Heather could sense the truth in the Alpha’s words as she thrashed and tried to break free.
“I see now…You’re his heir. The forerunner’s essence is in your veins. That’s why you’re so in control. You’ve been prepared for this your whole life—just another thief from a line of thieves. Good thing I came along to take that essence back.”
Sensing his distraction, she responded like she’d been trained. She threw an elbow into his ribs, then kicked her heel into his groin. At least that seemed to catch his attention long enough for her roll forward to toss him over her shoulder.
The Alpha hit the ground as Heather backed away. “You’re a monster!” The change was on her now. It didn’t even hurt this time. She tried to shout something else, but it came out as an inarticulate growl past her sharpening teeth. She nearly tripped over Nikolai, who was coming to and looked ready to get back into the fight. Maybe the two of them together might have a chance.
“I’m a monster?” the Alpha laughed as he stood up. “Look who’s talking, babe. You want a monster. I’ll show you a real monster.”
The humming noise that Harbinger said was the moon multiplied a hundredfold, only it wasn’t in orbit. It was ten feet away and closing. She covered her ears and screamed. Nikolai howled. The Alpha seemed to shimmer with heat. The snow around his feet instantly turned to water; then the puddles turned to steam. His skin bubbled and stretched, before it ripped open, revealing tufts of hair.
He was growing.
The splits in his skin grew, forked, and grew again. The silver three-clawed amulet shone with a light that threatened to blind. The raw energy of the amulet hammered her soul. Even if she hadn’t been changing, the amulet would have forced her to. It was as if the Alpha was sucking energy out of the air and using it to expand. Heather looked up and up…and up, until the Alpha lifted his tree-trunk size arms to the sky and let out an earth-shattering roar of triumph.
His voice crashed into her mind with the sound of thunder. BEHOLD THE MONSTER!