The shot changed to a sign for the Pisgah National Forest, rain slamming down, making a spray with its force. The voice-over said, “This latest mauling and gruesome death is said to be older than the previously discovered campsites, but isn’t far from the campsite at Paint Rock. In each of these cases, the campers were all killed.”
Adrenaline tried to spurt into my system, but instead of increased heart rate, I felt only dispirited apprehension, the anxiety like a sore tooth rather than a raging fight or flight response.
The TV camera shot expanded to reveal the entrance to the park, and focused in on a group of drenched backpackers, who were clearly leaving. The shot changed again to a close-up of three twenty-somethings, the rain-soaked man in the middle speaking for them all. “You expect some element of danger any time you camp, man, but this is worse than anything I ever faced out west, and I used to camp in grizzly territory.”
The girl said, “Yeah, we’re outta here. My parents said if I didn’t leave, they’d come up here and drag me home.”
The announcer came back on and said, “Park and county officials have suggested that campers leave, and are making sure that every camper who stays understands the risks. They had already instituted a check-in system for every hiker and camper, every day, and the numbers of new campers have dwindled to nothing. Until the marauding creatures are trapped and destroyed, the tourist dollars in Buncombe and surrounding counties will dry up to nothing.”
I muted the TV. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and to my feet. So much for sleep today. As I dressed, rain and wind beat at the windows. Oh goody. A hunt in the middle of a hurricane. I didn’t have that misery even when I lived in New Orleans. This was sooo gonna suck.
It didn’t take much to obtain Grizzard’s permission to join the hunt. The sheriff looked worn and wan and beaten, his body odor telling me that he was running on adrenaline, caffeine, and not much else. He’d have given me permission to join if I’d shown up dressed in a chicken suit, he was that tired and that worried. He gave me his personal cell phone number and a GPS unit and waved me off just as the downpour increased intensity.
I ignored the teenaged hiker’s directions and started down the mountain at a different incline from where the other searchers were working. The kid had gotten confused getting back to the park path, but the stench of his fear and the putrid scent of old blood and rotten meat led me down at the proper angle. I hadn’t expected to be hiking in the rain on this gig and hadn’t sent my water-resistant clothing ahead to the hotel. Torrents of water cascaded from the sky, aiming directly down my collar. I was soaked to the skin in minutes, grousing under my breath. This is Leo’s fault. Totally Leo’s fault. And Bruiser’s. Yeah. His fault too.
It took me an hour to backtrack through the woods and mud and laurel thickets until I hit werewolf scent. It overlay the reek of fetid, disintegrating bodies and took me directly to the campsite. There was a lot of gore and parts of three bodies. Maybe four. The camp was so strewn it was hard to tell what was what. The tent was in shreds; scavengers had been at the site, dragging things around; belongings were scattered. I moved back uphill until I found a cell signal and called Grizzard, giving him the coordinates before returning to the kill-site.
The rain made it hard to make sense of anything, and not just because the ground was mushy and the downpour was spilling down my neck. Not just because the cold front was pushing in fast on top of the dying hurricane, changing temps into early fall. The storm had washed all the scents downhill to meet the feeder creek the campers had pitched their tents beside. The creek was now a rushing torrent clogged with trash, brush, and body parts, the roar a violent white noise that drowned out every other sound.
I had seen a lot of gore in my day. I’d made a lot too. But this was beyond anything I had seen, a sensory overload, further complicated by the scent pattern. The wolves had been here more than once, their newer scent overlaying the older one like open wounds, infected and dying. And, of course, the grindylow had paid the place a visit, leaving his fishy trace. I learned one important thing—the woman killed here had been a witch, like Itty Bitty. No coincidence.
I crossed my arms and hunched my back against the cold, but, despite my faster metabolism, the dropping temps were seeping into my bones along with the wet. Standing under the partial protection of a big-leafed Royal Paulownia tree, I studied the site. I didn’t know what was driving the wolves beyond revenge and sickness. The level of violence here made no sense at all. The wolves had rampaged, killing all the campers, even the one woman, in an attack that appeared frenzied and irrational, even for werewolves. I looked out over the campsite, trying to see it from the viewpoint of whacked-out wolf. Rampage. Violence. Bloodlust.