Chapter 4
I didn’t want to die.
I had never been a quitter. That’s one of the things that made me such an effective Hunter: sheer absolute stubbornness.
Sure, I’d tried to do myself in that first morning when I’d woken up with a stomach full of human flesh. What sane man wouldn’t? But I’d managed to live with the curse for nearly a year, driven by a desperate mission of revenge, and the truth was, I didn’t want to die.
But it was my duty. I’d sworn an oath to my daddy that I would fight monsters to the end. The possibility of becoming one hadn’t really entered my mind, but then again Bubba Shackleford’s Professional Monster Killers had never come up against any werewolves before the one that got me. Undead were different. If you turned into an undead, that didn’t count; you weren’t a person anymore. Undead are just shells, with no souls, just going through the motions of living. But here I was, changed, the foulest of murderers, but I still considered myself human. I still felt like a person, but I knew the truth. I was a monster. And monsters had to be destroyed. By the time that bottle of whisky was half empty, the decision had been made. And this time I had a silver bullet to do it right.
The crumbling fort was isolated, but I heard the footsteps on the stone steps long before I saw whom they belonged to. I was polite enough to not want to share the sight of my fresh brains with some random passerby, so I put the Smith back under my shirt.
But the stranger wasn’t just passing through. The man was tall and very thin, with a beak nose, not too old but nearly bald, and wearing a black suit with a padre’s collar. He looked suspiciously vulture-like, but then again I was rather drunk. The priest said that he’d been sent to find me and that he was in dire need of my assistance.
“No offense, Father, but I’m a little busy right now,” I told him.
He bobbed his wispy head in agreement. “Of course. You were trying to have a contemplative moment before shooting yourself. I understand, but if I could have but a moment of your time first?” He looked like a local, but his English was excellent, hell, better than mine for sure.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes, but I have been watching you for quite some time. I know exactly what you are.”
I was certain that I’d never seen or smelled him before. I’d come here trailing a werewolf. I had been the predator. I had been the one running the night through the streets of the old city. If anyone had been following me, I would have seen them for sure. “Really? And what would that be?”
“Someone who bears a curse.” The priest dusted off a spot on the stone next to me and took a seat. “Someone who bears the mark of Cain.” He stopped, as if waiting for me to argue. “I’m sure you are aware that what you are contemplating is a terrible sin.”
“Yeah, yeah. Add it to the list. I’m going to hell. You got a point?”
“My impression is that you are a decent man who has had an unfortunate turn of events. I do believe that if I were to throw my life away, I would do it in a manner more useful to my fellow man. There is great nobility in sacrifice.”
I was drunk, but not that drunk. “I’m not really fit to become a man of the cloth. I’ve killed a whole mess of people.…Ate a few of them.”
“Oh no, oh my, no.” The priest laughed until he started to choke. I’d never seen a vulture laugh before. “That is not what I had in mind.” It took him a moment to catch his breath. Apparently the idea of me finding that much religion was downright hilarious. He watched the sunrise with me for a while before making his pitch. “I know of a village in need of help.”
“What kind of help?”
“The kind that will almost certainly get you killed in the process.”
* * *
Heather was just getting ready to go to work when she was startled by a knock at the front door. She had just finished securing the Velcro straps of her much-hated bulletproof vest. Hated may have been a strong word for something designed to save her life, but the vest was uncomfortable, annoying, and made her look dumpy. It was also mandatory. At least it was a princess-cut vest, which was a nice way of saying that it didn’t squish her breasts like the one she’d been issued in Minneapolis. Heather threw on her green uniform shirt and started buttoning.
Even though the old Kerkonen family home was right in the middle of town, she didn’t get very many visitors, and on the rare occasions that she did, Otto usually warned her a long time before they got up the driveway. Normally her old, three-legged, retired police German shepherd would be bouncing around the living room, shedding everywhere, eager at the prospect of company, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Some guard dog you are,” Heather muttered.
There was a fearful answering whine from under the kitchen table. She spotted her dog backed into the farthest corner, his head down, ears flat, obviously afraid. His black eyes were fixed on the front door.
“What’s wrong with you?” Otto hadn’t been a particularly well trained K9 even before he’d been retired. Copper County never had much of a budget, so when the chief decided they needed a dog, they’d bought Full Otto the über Hund from a second-rate trainer. He’d been relatively useless to the department, except the kids loved him at the DARE events. She’d kept him ever since he’d chased a tennis ball in front of a snow plow and ended up as Otto the Amazing Tripod Dog.
There was another knock, and Otto whined a little louder, almost as if he was begging her not to answer it. He was a little goofy, utterly loyal, too friendly for his own good, but Heather had never seen him scared before. He may have had only three legs, but he was still eighty pounds of righteous Teutonic muscle. It was so unlike him that she found it a bit unnerving. “Chill out, dog, jeez,” she admonished as she looked out the peephole.
The bulbs on the porch didn’t cast much light, but enough that she knew she’d never seen the man before. Otto let out a low, out-of-character growl. The security chain was still in place, but she’d worked enough break-ins to know how useless those things were. Heather put one hand on her issue Beretta as she opened the door a crack, just enough that the visitor could see her uniform. The “No Soliciting” sign was more effective against annoying people when there was somebody with a badge in the doorway.
“Good evening,” the stranger said politely.
“Can I help you?” Heather had a lot of practice scanning people and recording the pertinent facts. Caucasian male, a pretty good-looking guy, remarkably handsome, actually, probably around her age, dark hair cut short, neatly trimmed goatee, six foot, hundred and seventy, athletic, dressed nicely, with a white button shirt and a wool overcoat, hands in his pockets. The car parked on the street was a newer model BMW M3, silver. The Beamer stood out on the street full of pickup trucks and older cars. Her initial thought was that he was probably either going to try to sell her something or he had the wrong place.
His smile was rather disarming, or would have been to most women. Heather was too jaded to be swayed that easily. “Why, I hope so. My name is Nicholas Peterson. I’m sorry to bother you so late, officer.”
He looked nice enough, but Heather had inherited her family’s Finnish heritage of being sullenly suspicious of anything new. “And?”
“I was given directions at the library. I’m looking for someone.” He had just a little bit of an accent. Heather couldn’t place it, but he certainly wasn’t from around here. New Yorker? “And I can see from your name tag that I’ve found the right place. Do you know an Aksel Kerkonen?”
Great. Somebody else Grandpa owed money. She had thought that she was past dealing with this kind of thing. The first year had brought a long line of creditors out of the woodwork, but it had tapered off eventually. “That was my grandfather, but he’s passed away.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” he said. “My condolences.”
“It’s been a few years. What do you want?” She got ready for the invoice to come out, because if there was one skill that Grandpa had been good at, besides drinking, fighting, gambling, and mining, it had been absolutely driving the Kerkonens into poverty.
“Perhaps you may still be able to help me. You see, I’m a historian by trade. I’m doing some research for a book that I am writing. Your grandfather immigrated here from Finland in 1947, correct?”
“Something like that,” she replied suspiciously. There really wasn’t anything about her grandfather that a historian would be interested in, unless it was the history of random drunken knife fights of the Great Lakes region. “Lots of Finns around here, though. You’re probably looking for someone else.” Heather was Irish on her mother’s side and didn’t really know much family history either way.
“Did he fight in the Winter War?”
Grandpa had. He’d been some sort of sniper, in fact, but he hadn’t spoken of it much. Up until the year he died, he’d been a crack shot with his old Nagant rifle and could still move like a ghost on cross-country skis. It was only when he got to drinking that he’d started referring to Russians as “game animals with no bag limit.”
When she nodded, Peterson pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. Instead of the expected bill, it was a photocopied drawing. “Did he have a medal like this?” He held the picture up. “About an inch across, relatively flat. It may have been on a simple chain. As you can see, the workmanship is very rough. It would be silver in color.”
Her first instinct was to wonder if it was supposed to be valuable, as there were a few scams that started that way, but most hustlers were smart enough to prey on widows and the stupid, not suspicious cops. She gave the picture a brief look. It was shaped like an animal track, only comically distorted with three long claws. A facsimile of a human hand was carved into the center. “Sorry. I’ve never seen that before. I can’t help you. Look, Mr. Peterson, I need to get to work.”
“I’d be willing to pay a large sum of money for it.” The stranger was insistent. “Perhaps he would have left it to your father?”
Heather really wasn’t in the mood. “He’s dead, too. So is everyone else, and if my grandpa ever had anything that might have been worth something, it would have ended up at a pawnshop a long time ago. Good night.” She started to shut the door, but he quickly jammed his foot in the way before she could close it.
Heather looked incredulously at the leather dress shoe blocking her doorframe. The nerve. “Are you kidding me? Listen—” But when she looked back up, the stranger’s manner had subtly shifted. His head was tilted a bit too far to one side, and he was studying her intently through the crack. There was something not quite right about the way his eyes reflected the porch light, and suddenly Heather realized that Otto was right behind her legs, growling and shaking. A shiver ran up Heather’s spine as her hand automatically tightened around the butt of her gun.
The man studied her for a moment. Even his voice was different, deeper. “She is telling the truth.…”