SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

The Wild Hunt James A. Moore

The snow was coming down in frenzy; not drifting lazily to the ground, but hammering the earth and everything it touched. Cars were merely shapes under the thick blanket of frozen white and while the houses hadn’t disappeared yet, it seemed a real possibility.

Mark Loman was just fine with that. He hadn’t wanted to go into work today anyway, and now all he had to do with his time was watch a few movies and put up with his wife and kids. Lou and Ellen were good kids; they were easy to deal with. Donna, his wife, was another story entirely. Ever since she’d gone back to work, she’d become a shrew of epic scale.

He looked to where she sat with her little laptop, chain-smoking her damned cigarettes and managed not to sneer. When they’d married she would have been best described as ‘handsome’. With a thin build and her auburn hair, her easy going smile and her sense of humor, she was always fun to be around, but she’d never quite made it to beautiful. Now, after almost twenty years of tanning herself whenever she got a chance and eating enough food to keep a sparrow underweight, she was all bones and leathery skin. She looked more like one of the stuffed hunting trophies in his den than like the woman he’d fallen in love with.

She looked up at him and smiled, and her face was closer to what he liked to see than to the pinched, hard expression he had grown used to of late. She was back to handsome, at least and that was a step in the right direction.

Did he love her anymore? He really didn’t know, but he was certainly comfortable with her and just too damned lazy to change. He looked away after throwing her a quick smile of his own in return and looked at the two kids on the floor, watching the Wizard of Oz. Lou and Ellen were good, sweet kids. He was proud of them despite their occasional shortcomings — Lou liked to go out and party too much and Ellen was happiest when she was being a drama queen like her mother — and he loved them with all of his heart.

If he didn’t, he’d probably have left Donna instead of just finding some action on the side.

The wind picked up outside just as flying monkeys were attacking the scarecrow in the movie, and both of the kids jumped a little as the hard breeze slammed into the house with enough force to shake the windows. Mark smiled and stood. “Gonna make some popcorn, guys. Who wants some?”

Lou and Ellen were both crying “I do!” around the same time the front door exploded inward.

The house was built to withstand the sort of weather going on outside and Mark stared hard at the fractured wood sliding across the hardwood floor and running down the short foyer leading into the living room without any real idea of what the hell had just happened. His kids didn’t know either but they let out ear shattering screams just the same. Donna let out a squeal of her own and judging by the ache in his throat that hadn’t been there a second ago, he must have let out a good one, too. He didn’t remember screaming but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

The cold from outside moved into the room with all the subtly of a sledgehammer and brought with it a feral stench. Not foul, exactly, but musky and wild. Mark turned and headed down the hallway toward his den, where he kept his firearms. He saw something in the open threshold, a dark, furry shape, and decided the best thing he could do was be armed when whatever was out there came inside.

Donna screamed, “Where the hell are you going?” and ran toward the two children, ready to grab them off the carpet and hide them away, which was exactly what he’d hoped she’d do.

Mark didn’t answer. He was far too busy opening the locked door to his private sanctuary and grabbing for his shotgun. Most of his weapons were locked away — he had kids, after all and he didn’t want them ending up on the news for accidentally blowing each other away because he got stupid — but he kept the one firearm socked behind the door and hidden behind an American flag for any possible emergencies. The weapon was loaded and the box of shells was at the base of the flag. He had both in his hands and was heading back down the hallway before he could really give any conscious thought to the action. He’d done his time in the service and he’d remembered the lessons he learned.

He moved back into the hallway as he checked the chambers and made sure the.12 gauge was loaded. By the time he was back in the living room, the TV had moved on to another singing number and his wife and kids were backed up in the corner by what looked at first like a bear.

Mark’s heart skipped three beats while he reassessed the situation. It wasn’t a bear, and it wasn’t alone. Black fur covered a hard, muscular form that was designed as much for speed as for power. Not a bear, he thought, trying to decide exactly what it was. It was closer to a wolf, but the body shape was still wrong. The thing paced in front of his family staring with oddly glowing eyes. It kept a bared muzzle full of teeth close to the legs of his loved ones.

There were three more of the things in the living room, all of them staring hard at the hallway where Mark stood.

“Mark! Do something!” Donna’s voice cracked and strained as she looked at the thing in front of her. Lou and Ellen were held close to her, partially behind her as she shielded them with her own body. In that moment she looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her.

Mark lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and sighted it at the monster closest to his family. “Donna, don’t you move a muscle, honey.”

A chorus of growls answered his gesture and the one nearest Donna snapped its teeth inches away from her left knee and sent the children into tears.

Mark’s hand trembled a bit. He wasn’t sure if he could kill the thing without at least injuring his wife. The cold from outside was spilling in a thick layer of snow and chilled his body, adding to his doubts about making a clean kill.

“Now, I wouldn’t go and do anything too hasty there, fella.” The voice came from the doorway and Mark spun hard, his eyes focusing on the man standing there. He’d seen him somewhere before but couldn’t for the life of him remember exactly where.

“What the fuck is going on here?” He looked at the stranger, doing his best to sound like he was in control of the situation. He was good at bluffing that sort of thing; it was how he’d managed to turn his single bay garage into the biggest chain of automotive repair stores in the Midwest.

The stranger stepped closer, into the light of the living room, and revealed more of his face. He stepped forward with the confidence of a general facing off against a battalion of fresh recruits.

“What’s going on here depends on you, Mr Loman.” The voice was deep, and the man was just a little intimidating. He was tall, easily a few inches over six feet, and he was dressed in a hooded parka that was still covered with melting snow. Denim pants layered with a crust of ice and thick, black leather boots that dropped crushed slush to the hardwood floor finished off the outfit.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I want some answers from you. If you answer me truthfully, we might just go away and leave your family alone. If you lie, we’ll kill you, but make you watch them die first.”

Donna started crying, and the kids increased the volume of their own wails of misery. Mark kept the business end of the shotgun aimed at the stranger’s chest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He asked the question, but even as the words left his mouth, he thought he knew.

The broad, weathered face looking at him wore a small, knowing smile. “Do I have to say it in front of your family, Loman? Do you really want me to do that?” His voice was soft, barely even carried to him past the wind from outside, but Mark saw the look on Donna’s face switch for a second from panic to curiosity.

“I-No. Just ask your questions.”

“Who else was there?”

He looked into the man’s eyes, puzzled by their color. Hadn’t they been blue a moment before? He couldn’t be certain, maybe it had just been the lighting, but now they were brown, dark and deep and focused on him to the exclusion of everything else.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there when that happened.”

Those dark eyes stayed on his, and he swallowed softly. He was also a very good liar. He had been for a long time.

Finally the man nodded. “Kill his bitch.”

“What? NO!” Mark started pulling the trigger on his shotgun and felt the impact move up his arms as the stranger grabbed the long barrel and pointed it toward the wall. The hammer rose and fell and set off an explosion that blasted through the wood paneling along the wall and shattered the plaster behind it.

Mark looked past the stranger’s brutal face just as the thing on the ground stood, rising in height until it could barely stand in the room. When he’d been young Mark had a St Bernard that used to stand on its back legs and place its paws on his shoulders when it came to greet him. That old dog had stood close to six feet tall when it was in that position and it had weighed in at 185 pounds. The thing that reached out with one paw and grabbed Donna by the throat and yanked her forward was much bigger.

Donna let out a cry of fear and desperate pain as the claws on the thing sank slightly into her neck and drew blood. She was lifted completely off her feet and hauled toward the bared teeth in front of her. Ellen and Lou tried to hold on, to anchor their mother, but were shaken off easily by the monster.

Mark tried to keep his grip on the shotgun, but the man he’d just tried to kill ripped it out of his hands and cast it aside. The parka covered arm wrapped around his neck and spun him forward into the living room proper as the other dark shapes moved easily out of the way.

Mark struggled, he did, but it didn’t seem to do him the least bit of good. He fought and kicked and cursed, his mind focused solely on getting to Donna and saving her.

“Watch this, Loman. You did this. Remember that.” There was no humor in the voice, only regret tinged with anger.

“Oh, God! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just leave her alone!” His voice trembled and broke as he pleaded.

The man behind him grabbed his hair in one hand and held his skull with enough force to make the bones creak. “Keep watching! You keep watching, Loman or I swear I’ll make your children suffer for hours.”

Donna had tears running down her face and her teeth bared as she hyperventilated. She’d been trying to get away all along but the grip on her neck was simply too powerful and despite trying to rake her nails over the furry arm that held her, she hadn’t managed to get through the thick pelt of hair to catch any flesh.

For the first time, Mark finally, really focused on the face of the thing that carried his wife closer. He was a hunter; he knew damned near every animal on the planet well enough to identify it. This grinning thing was nothing that should have existed. There were marks in the black fur, patterns within the shadow of the rich, dark pelt. The face bore every indication of belonging to a predator, from the forward facing eyes to the wrinkled muzzle above a set of teeth designed to cut flesh and break bones. It was standing on two hind legs, but the way they bent made it obvious the thing was more comfortable running on all fours. The torso was wide and, being a man who prided himself on staying in shape, Mark knew that some of the clusters of muscle that stretched over the ribcage had never been designed to accommodate a four-legged creature.

The eyes looked back at him and took his measure and found him lacking.

“Mark! Please! Don’t let them do this!” Donna was panicked, and he couldn’t find any fault in that. He was terrified himself; imagining the damage the teeth would cause and already knowing the reasons for the attack.

“Oh, Donna. I’m so sorry, honey.”

The stranger spoke again, his voice a deadly rumble. “Are you now? You certainly weren’t crying then, were you?”

“She has nothing to do with this!” He tried one last time to break free, and felt the fingers holding his head push forward, driving thick nails into his scalp. The pain was enough to make him stop, to make him scream out again.

“I know. She’s innocent in this. That’s what makes it such a shame.”

The beast holding Donna looked at the man behind Mark and turned its head quizzically.

Two words and every hope that Mark had of coming out of this alive fell to pieces. Two words and his entire world exploded into ruin.

The man said, “Do it.”

Without any hesitation, the beast opened its mouth and lunged forward, pulling Donna closer in at the same time. Her flailing arms beat up and down on the creature’s head, her fists striking as hard as they could, even as those teeth ripped through her shirt and carved trenches into her breasts, her sternum. Donna bucked hard, her hands unclenching and grabbing at the thick fur around the thing’s head, pulling, trying to wrench the pain away.

A shower of bright red blood came out of the wounds even as Mark heard the bones in Donna’s chest break. The teeth let go for an instant and then sank in deeper as the nightmare in front of him broke her chest cavity open. When it finished ripping a wound wide enough, the foul thing began shredding the organs underneath. Donna let out one more powerful screech and her body stiffened with agony. The monster reared back and pulled a mass of raw, bloodied flesh from inside Donna. Viscera painted her body, her face, the floor, and her dark-furred assailant in a dozen shades of crimson.

As Donna’s body relaxed the creature let her drop to the ground, a lifeless wreck, a ruined parody of the woman Mark had married.

Mark stared, too stunned to even move, barely even breathing as his wife hit the floor. The kids were on the ground, gasping out jagged sobs, their faces tear-stained and red.

Mark was shoved forward and stumbled, his foot catching on the leg of one of the damned beasts surrounding him. He fell, his hands outstretched to catch himself, and landed across Donna’s still form. Warm blood covered his hands and face, his left palm slipped into the hole in her chest cavity, bending his fingers almost to the breaking point, and his elbow slammed into her face, breaking her nose.

Mark backed away in a raw panic, screaming hoarsely as he realized what was covering him. He wanted to act, wanted to grab his shotgun and kill the bastard that had just murdered Donna, but his body wasn’t listening. He wanted to protect his children, too, but that was beyond his abilities.

The four beasts leaped across the living room, knocking aside the coffee table and scattering a week’s worth of magazines and unread mail in the process.

Dorothy cried on the TV screen and the children, who meant more to Mark than anything else in the world, cried with her as they were surrounded.

“Wait.” The voice came from the man again, the stranger who looked so damned familiar.

Mark turned his head slowly, barely able to manage the feat, and blinked Donna’s blood from his eyes.

“Take them. Don’t kill them.” The man was looking at him, his eyes blue again. “Don’t harm a hair on their heads.”

He moved over to Mark again and squatted on his haunches, his right foot crushing Donna’s hand in the process. Donna made no noise of protest. She couldn’t, she was dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dea—

“Pay attention, Loman.” The man slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a heavy red mark and bring Mark out of his daze.

“Why…? Why did you?” The tears came then, tinged with a dark pink color, washing the last of her blood from his eyes.

“Shut up. Pay attention. I’ve decided to give you a fighting chance; more than you and yours ever gave, I suspect. You’re going to answer my questions, or I swear to you I’ll mail you back a piece of your children every day for a month. Do you understand me?”

He didn’t trust himself to speak. Mark nodded instead.

“Good. I want their names. The names of everyone who was with you. I want their addresses and phone numbers. You do this, and your children get to live.”

Even as he spoke Ellen was screaming, her cries muffled by the furry hand cupped over her face. Lou was silent and staring into space. Both of them were held close to bestial bodies, dwarfed by the things that carried them.

Mark knew all the information he needed and got it out of his Rolodex under the supervision of the stranger with the hellhounds for pets. He handed over the five business cards. He could almost think again, could almost reason, and the grief he felt was gradually becoming something else.

“I know you want me dead, Loman. I understand your anger.” The man put the cards away in his parka and sealed the zipper over the pocket as if he were carefully securing a vital treasure.

“I’ll see you dead, too, you bastard.”

“Maybe you will.” The stranger nodded his head. “You’ll get your chance. Hide the body of your wife or call the police. It won’t matter in the long run.” He looked at Mark with a fury of his own, a dark rage that wanted to come to the surface. “By now your children are gone. If you’re smart, you won’t warn your friends. You might need them. Like I said, I’m going to give you a chance. If you behave, you and your friends will get your children back. If not, I’ll kill them all and then I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?”

What could he do? Mark nodded.

“I already have your name and number. I’ll call you sometime soon. Once we’re ready for you. Don’t be stupid. Don’t try to find us before it’s time. I crossed over five hundred miles of this country to get to you, to track you down. Don’t think I won’t do it again.”

The stranger turned and moved toward the open front door with the grace of a gymnast, and headed back into the storm.

Moments later the house was silent except for the movie that was playing in the living room and the sound of the wind howling out its cold dismay.

For a time, Mark Loman joined in its song.

Scott Lassiter was in a good mood for the first time in weeks, right before the phone rang. The business deal he’d been trying to work out finally went through, his commission on the sale of all the equipment needed for a national chain of discount warehouse stores was now a reality instead of a pipe dream, and his commission was enough to add two zeroes to his yearly income.

So he was just as happy as he could be when he reached over, grabbed his cell from its holder and answered the phone.

His joy lasted exactly seven seconds.

“Hello?”

“Scott!?!” He recognized Allison’s voice instantly. His wife of two years and the girl he’d dreamed of being with for as long as he could remember. Her voice was ripe with fear and his heart almost froze inside his chest.

The road around him was spilling over with cars all heading away from Atlanta’s busy traffic flow and toward the suburbs to the north. He turned on his flashers and pulled to the side of the road, moving on autopilot. He’d always been a very cautious man.

“Allison? What’s wrong, honey? Is it the baby?”

Her pregnancy had been touch and go from the very beginning, and much as they both wanted children, the little one growing inside of her seemed almost determined not to survive.

“Scott! Scott!”

He gripped the phone so hard he thought for sure he was going to shatter it, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “Allison! Listen to me, honey, calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was sedate and cold. “Hello, Scott. This is a kidnapping call. Listen very carefully if you ever want to see your wife again.”

“What?” His pulse slammed into overdrive and he looked around as if he might, somehow, see the man speaking to him past the traffic and the fourteen miles he still had to travel in order to get back to his house.

“You don’t have time for questions. You don’t have time for anything. Pay careful attention. Your wife is in my custody. If you attempt to call the police or interfere, I’ll kill her. Wait for a phone call. I’ll use your cell phone number. Oh, and make absolutely sure you act like everything is just fine. You have a little boy on the way and the only way he’s going to make it is if you do as I say.”

The click of the phone on the other end terminating the call was loud and made him flinch.

Scott stared off into the distance, seeing nothing as the heavy traffic moved past him.

“Allison?” He spoke only to himself, knowing full well she couldn’t possibly answer him.

George Heatherly walked into his house at the usual time, his car keys bouncing in his hand. Coming home meant a lot more to him these days than it had in the past. These days he had company waiting for him when he stepped through the door and dinner either waiting, or almost prepared. Cheryl was good to him like that.

He’d never expected to find anyone who could fill the void left in his world when Amy passed away, but after years of being alone, Cheryl was there to make him feel complete again.

If it wasn’t actually love, it was a damned fine substitute.

He ran across Cheryl when he was waiting at the doctor’s office for his yearly check up. The red head was waiting too, and despite the fact the place looked deserted except for the two of them, there didn’t seem to be anyone who was in a hurry to see them.

She was the one who started the conversation, displaying a razor sharp wit and damned fine looks to boot. Somehow, six months later, she moved into his house and sort of took over. Most of the time he was too dazed to question it, and even when he did decide to sit down and assess the situation, he fully acknowledged that he was better with her in his world than without her. Also, the sex was amazing and her cooking beat all hell out of another take-out pizza.

All of that and more flashed through his mind as he moved inside and carefully took off his coat, placing it in the small closet just inside. That was one of the rules he’d gladly accepted when she took over: coats were to be put away immediately and shoes were to follow them into the closet.

He put away the coat and slid his shoes where they belonged and then moved into his house.

And stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the devastation. The black leather couch had been thrown across the room and shattered the TV set. The long sheet of glass from the coffee table was now scattered across the plush carpet, a sea of shimmering reflections.

George stared at the scene with a blank expression on his face as he tried to absorb the damage. “Cheryl? Hon, are you here?”

No one answered him at first. But he heard a floorboard creak in the direction of the kitchen and felt his mouth go dry and his bladder threaten a revolt.

Some of his friends liked to keep a dozen or so firearms in the house, liked to go on talking for hours about how good they were with their weapons and how much fun it was to blow away a hundred or so Osama Bin Laden faces on the targets at the local range.

George didn’t give a good damn about weapons. He went hunting with the guys because it was fun to get together with his old high school chums once in a while.

Oh, Lord in Heaven, how he wished he had their obsession on his side tonight. He didn’t even own a gun. He borrowed one of Mark’s every year when they got together.

George looked around for anything that would make a suitable weapon and found nothing.

In the hallway, he heard a footstep hit another of the loose floorboards, this one several feet closer to where he was standing.

“Cheryl?” He could barely manage a whisper. The chill from outside was still sticking to his body, but a sheen of sweat seeped from his pores just the same.

“She’s not here.” The voice was deep and bordered on a growl. The man who walked into view was a complete stranger as best he knew, but looked like he should have been locked away on general principles. He stood six feet, four inches in height. His broad shoulders threatened to split the seams of the dark blue flannel shirt he wore along with dark jeans, dark boots and a black leather belt that was cracking from age. The man had a mane of golden brown hair with a blend of silvery and reddish highlights and the clearest blue eyes George had ever seen. His face was wind burned, a little weathered, and broad.

“Who are you?”

Blue Eyes looked at him for a moment and shook his head. “You really don’t remember me?”

“No.” George was unsettled, but doing his best to keep a level head. It didn’t pay to jump to conclusions. The man might be an ex-lover of Cheryl’s, he might be an old high school buddy who hadn’t aged well, or he could even be a cop. Not every person he encountered had to be somebody sinister, even if the man in question had no reason at all to be in his house.

“Well, that’s a peach, isn’t it?” The man stepped closer and his eyes narrowed. “I remember you, George. I remember you very well. You were the one who told them to stop.”

He looked at the stranger and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea in hell what you’re talking about. Why are you in my house and where is Cheryl?”

“Cheryl has taken a vacation, George. She didn’t want to go without leaving you a message, but I convinced her that I would explain everything to you.”

George felt his calm exterior starting to crack. “What have you done to her?”

“Not a blessed thing.” The man crossed his thick arms and looked down at George. “And I won’t do anything to her, either, as long as you follow a few simple rules.”

He’d tried so hard, been so good about not losing his temper, and he wanted to keep that inner peace, but the man standing in front of him was making it very difficult. “Listen to me. Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t want any part of it. Bring Cheryl back here, now, and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”

The man smiled — smiled, like they were having a smoke break together — and shook his head. “That’s not the way this works, George. You have to play by the rules, my rules, or the only way you’ll ever see Cheryl again is in a morgue.”

“You miserable fuck.” His vision went red and the muscles in his body tensed. Adrenaline kicked into George’s body like an old familiar friend, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed the bigger man by the front of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. George slammed the man into the wall, his teeth bared, his breaths coming in hard fast gasps, and he snarled as he spoke. “You don’t want to fuck with me! Where is Cheryl?”

The knee that hit him in the solar plexus hurt, but George was almost beyond feeling anything. He grunted but didn’t let go of the man he held against the wall.

“You’re about to get me angry, George. Don’t do that.” The broad, almost brutal face looked different, but he barely noticed the transformation. George was too busy losing his ability to stay calm.

“Where is she!?!”

The man sighed and slammed his knee into George a second time with far more effect. George let go of him and staggered back, his body bent over on itself and he fell against the far wall, gasping for air.

The stranger jumped as he landed on his feet and in the space of a heartbeat, he had his hands on George’s lapels and was returning the favor. George was not a small man, he was taller than average and a little heavier than was healthy, but the man shook him like a temperamental toddler and slammed him into the wall with enough force to crack the plaster.

“You’re not listening to me, George! I said if you don’t behave yourself you’ll never see Cheryl alive again! Pay attention!” The voice was deeper than before and rumbled; the blue eyes had gone so dark they looked almost black, and when the man spoke his lips peeled away from teeth that barely seemed to fit inside his mouth.

“You don’t get to hit me, George. You don’t get to threaten me. The only reason you’re even alive is because I’m nicer than most of my kind and I decided to let you have a fighting chance.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” George struggled, even with the wind knocked out of his body and the giant of a man — six foot four? Hardly, closer to six foot eight! — holding him off the ground it was hard for him to listen to the words and make himself calm down.

“You told them to stop, George. I’m giving you points for that. But you didn’t even try to make them stop. You just watched.”

The Incredible Growing Man spun George in a half-circle and threw him toward the distant kitchen. George was reunited with the floor in a painful collision that left his arms tangled with a chair from the dining room set and eyes that refused to focus.

Before he could get to his feet, or even to his knees, the man was back again and this time he took the offensive, pushing one foot against George’s neck and pinning him in place. “Keep it up, George, and I’ll tear Cheryl’s heart from her body. Do you understand me?”

George stopped struggling and took several deep breaths, focusing himself, pulling back from the anger that still threatened to erupt. Finally he nodded, knowing that all the rage in the world wouldn’t help him right now.

The man nodded and stepped back, his face still locked into a snarl. “Good. Listen to me and listen carefully. Go about your life like nothing is out of the ordinary. I’ll be in contact with you in a few days.” He moved toward the front door. “Don’t get stupid, George. You do anything you shouldn’t, and Cheryl will be the one who pays for it. Oh, and keep that temper of yours at the ready.” He paused and looked back at George, still on the ground. “You’re going to need it.”

Cullie Landers didn’t have a family. He was alone in the world and that suited him just fine. He tended to think of himself as a man without a care in the world, and most of the time he was right. His parents had left him a fortune when they died, and he’d been wise in how he spent it. The house was bought and paid for, the cars in the driveway all belonged to him and he was cautious about going crazy with the spending. He didn’t live beyond his means and with a little careful financial maneuvering he’d managed to set most of his assets aside and still give himself a spending allowance of almost three thousand dollars a month. When it came to living on Easy Street, Cullie was an old pro.

When it came to having a good time, he was even more of a seasoned veteran. So it wouldn’t have surprised anyone who knew him to hear that he staggered into his house at just after two in the morning, wise enough at least to have taken a cab home. He could always pick up his Bronco in the morning.

Cullie opened the door and stumbled through the threshold as the room did a small spin to the left. He reached back to close the door and encountered a very warm fur coat instead.

He turned back with unfocused eyes and looked at the thickly muscled torso he was touching, felt the flesh move as the thing standing in his doorway breathed, and then looked up at the face.

He meant to scream “bear!” but never had the chance. The fist that clocked him was as big as his face, and drove him to his knees. He was unconscious when he was lifted from the ground and carried out into the cold night air.

Captain Eric Fulford was not happy. He was, in fact, absolutely miserable. The diner in front of him looked perfectly comfortable, but he sat in his car anyway, smoking a Pall Mall and trying to keep calm.

Four days earlier his wife Sarah’s car had been found abandoned on the side of the road. Foul play was suspected. Two days later, he was home on emergency leave, trying to figure out exactly what had happened to Sarah and the boys. Lance and Tyler were good kids, but too young to do much if something had happened. He took out the last picture taken of the whole family together and stared at each of his loved ones’ faces, memorizing them.

The phone call had come just after two in the morning, and he’d answered it quickly, praying it was Sarah. No, instead it was a stranger’s voice.

“Captain, we have Sarah and your twins. Lovely boys they are, too. They’re all fine and they miss you horribly.”

“Who is this?”

“Don’t concern yourself with that. Right now what you need to worry about is getting your family back. So here’s the deal. I want you to go to the Wilmont Diner on White Horse Pike, do you remember the place?”

How could he ever forget? “Yes, yes I do.”

“Excellent. I want you to meet me in there at seven pm on Friday night. The place will be crowded, but I’ve arranged for a very large table. You’ll find several of your hunting buddies waiting for you there. Like you, they have family members to consider. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” His heart felt like it was going to explode, but he made himself as calm as he could manage.

“Do I have to explain what happens if you’re late? Or if you bring reinforcements with you? I know what you do for a living. I know you’ve been out of country, dealing with a few problems in the Middle East, and I have to be honest here, I’m sorry it’s had to come to this.”

“I won’t be bringing anyone with me.”

“Excellent.” The voice was pleasant enough, but there was a sarcastic tone that grated on his nerves. “We all want this resolved, Captain. One serviceman to another, I hope we can bring about a painless resolution to the problem at hand.”

“What is this all about?”

“Murder, Captain. It’s about the people you and your friends murdered.”

The phone cut off before he could respond.

He’d had to drive most of the last day to get here, but he’d managed it, juiced on more coffee than he ever thought it possible for one man to drink and enough roadside burgers to feed his full battalion.

Now the only problem was getting motivated enough to leave the relative safety of his car. The diner was a brick affair, with chrome around the widows and doors and enough neon to light up a city block in Las Vegas. He could see through the windows, and he knew several of the men sitting at three tables that had been put together. Of course he knew them; they were his buds from all the way back in high school and, in a couple of cases, even earlier.

He saw Mark and Scott and Cullie and George. The only person who wasn’t there yet besides himself was Tony, and Tony hadn’t been with them when everything went down.

So maybe they were just waiting for him. Maybe Tony wasn’t a part of it.

“Let’s just get this done. I can’t sit here all night.” Eric climbed out of his Ford and locked the doors before heading into the diner. He walked slowly, despite his own admonitions. Fear can do that to a person.

The three tables were joined in a larger block, a chunk of the room that dwarfed everything else. When Eric sat down the total number of people became an even dozen. He didn’t nod or do anything but sit. Cullie was next to him, his eyes blackened and his nose swollen to the point where he barely looked like himself.

The strangers at the table were, as a whole, quiet, giving off a calm that was unsettling under the circumstances.

One of the strangers, a large man who had his longish hair pulled back into an efficient ponytail, tossed a menu toward Eric. Eric took it.

“Order something to eat. You’ll need your strength.” Eric recognized the voice from the phone.

“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going in here?” He’d been as calm as he could, but the time for patiently waiting was done with.

The man nodded and gestured for the waitress. The woman wore her nametag and blouse over jeans that looked almost painted on, but she wasn’t even remotely attractive to Eric. She could have been dancing around naked and she wouldn’t have even caught his eye for more than a second.

“He’ll have a steak dinner, make it rare, and a large coffee.” The woman nodded and turned away. “You looked awfully cold out there, Captain.”

The man cleared his throat. “Now then, you’re all here for a reason. You’re here to deal with a matter of bloodshed and how it will be paid for.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” It was Scott that spoke up, confused. He was, as always, the most naïve among them.

The leader of the group around them shook his head and stared at Scott. Scott, the go-getter salesman, dressed in his jeans and his thick preppy sweater and his perfect hair, facing off against a man who looked like he would probably be at home leading a Viking raid on another village. Oh to be sure the clothes were modern, but the man still looked like a savage trying to hide among civilized people.

There was something about all of the strangers that felt the same way. It wasn’t the style of clothing they wore — which spoke more of rural common sense than fashion — it wasn’t that they were unclean or bore a thousand tattoos, but there was something about them, about the way that they carried themselves that drew the soldier’s eye in Eric. They were, for lack of a better way to put it, seasoned warriors. He had no doubt in his mind they had fought together before and maybe even killed together.

“Not this last November, gentlemen, but the year before that, you were out hunting together, do you remember that?”

Eric and the others nodded their assent to the question.

“While you were hunting, you did what almost everyone does. You camped out, you had a good time, and you maybe drank a few too many beers. Nothing out of the ordinary there.” The man took his time and fixed each and every one of them with his stare.

“Except on your last night.” Eric saw it, and felt his stomach drop. Scott didn’t flinch when the Viking talked about the last night, but Cullie, George and Mark all did. Eric flinched too, but for different reasons. He hadn’t been with them. He didn’t know all of the details, but he knew that something had happened that night, after they’d packed up and headed their separate ways.

Scott shook his head, puzzled, and proved again that in his way he was the most naïve, or just maybe the most innocent of them. “I still don’t know what you’re-”

The Viking lifted his hand. “I’m getting to that.” He shot a look to his friends around the table, and without a word between them they communicated something vital. Eric didn’t know what they’d said but they were definitely talking.

“On the last night, after you broke camp, you left in three cars. One of those cars took off with Anthony Ridgemont behind the wheel and went south. The other two vehicles moved to the north and east, heading in this direction. Do you remember that, gentlemen?”

Once again they all nodded their heads. “Excellent. Mr Ridgemont is no longer a part of the story. The closest he came to doing something wrong was failing to put out the fire as well as he should have, and that was fixed easily enough.”

“But the rest of you? Well, now, that’s where things get interesting. I’m an excellent tracker, and I had a little help along the way, but it was rough weather, there was rain, and there was even a little sleet. It’s understandable that one of the gentlemen driving lost his way a bit and managed to slide into a ditch.”

Of course they all remembered. Eric and Scott had turned around after getting a call from Cullie’s cell phone almost an hour and a half after they’d left. The car had gone off the road and run into a tree. Because Scott was smart enough to rent a well-equipped Jeep Wrangler, they’d managed to pull it back up to the road. No big deal, just a few hours of lost time before they all got home.

At least, that was what Eric had thought at first. It was later, when he asked why the others had taken so long to call that he suspected something else might have been up.

“Which three of you were in that vehicle?” The Viking looked at each of the men, and none of them was willing to raise a hand. “Let’s try this again. Which of you were in that vehicle, gentlemen? The other two are free to go.”

“What about our families?” That was Mark. His voice cracked when he spoke, dried and dusty, his eyes shining feverishly.

“The men who weren’t in the car can collect their families and leave, but only after this is all resolved.”

Eric spoke softly, his voice as controlled as he could manage. “What happened in that car?”

The Viking looked at him. “I was hoping you weren’t involved, Captain. I meant what I said. I respect what you’re doing for this country.”

Eric ignored him and looked at Mark. His old friend couldn’t look him in the face.

“What happened in that car, Mark?”

Mark shook his head.

It was George who finally spoke up. “I was in the car. So was Mark. So was Cullie. Eric and Scott didn’t have anything to do with it.”

The Viking nodded and stood. “That was about the way I remembered it, but I couldn’t be sure.”

He was about to speak again when the waitress came back and set down Eric’s meal. Eric nodded his thanks and she went on her way.

“Eat up, Captain.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Take it to go; you and Mr Lassiter are free to leave. Your families are being taken care of and you’ll have them back when this is done.” The man’s eyes barely even looked in his direction. Now that his part had been played, Eric ceased to be important.

Hell with that. “What happened in the fucking car?” His voice was rising and a few of the diners at nearby tables looked in their direction, but quickly looked away when they saw the strangers surrounding the table. All of the men with the Viking had stood.

“That doesn’t concern you any more, Captain. Leave it like that. I’ll call you when everything is finished.”

Scott shook his head. “No way. I want to see my wife. Now.

“Mr Lancaster, I know you’re missing your wife. I appreciate that. But it just isn’t going to work out that way for a while. I have business to take care of with your friends. That’s all you need to know.”

Scott opened his mouth to speak. “That’s not going to work for me! My wife’s condition is delicate!”

Eric shook his head and responded at the same time: “This is nonsense. Whatever happened, you can take care of it in a court of law.”

George stood at the same time, shaking his head, red faced. “I didn’t have any part in it, I tried to stop them. I didn’t kill anyone.”

And all of the voices together stopped as George’s words rang out through the cacophony.

Scott spoke first, his eyes wider than usual and his voice shaken by the words he’d just heard from a long-time friend. “Wait a minute. Wait a goddamned minute! Who got killed?”

Just a few words at the wrong time can put an awkward spin on a situation. The Viking looked at everyone at the surrounding tables and shook his head: Can you believe the lack of tact from some people?

The people around their joined tables suddenly decided they had better places to be. Four couples and at least two families got up and headed to the cash register to pay for their meals, several of which were barely even touched.

The six men who had called Scott and his friends to the diner stood looking pointedly at the people who’d had their meals interrupted until they left the building.

There was a long few seconds of silence until the last of the diners left and then the guy with the ponytail spoke again. “Would one of you like to tell Mr Lassiter what happened? Or would you prefer I do it for you?”

None of the three men looked at Scott. The big guy finally shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess it’s me then. While you were driving on your way and these three were doing their own thing, they hit something on the side of the road. They ran over a wolf.”

“We didn’t see it.” That was Cullie, who was whining.

“You had your chance. Shut up.” The man skewered Cullie with a glance and then went back to his tale. “Now, accidents happen, I’m the first to acknowledge that. They’re unfortunate, but they really can’t be avoided.” Scott was fascinated by the man’s face. The features were all where they belonged, but the way his eyes moved, the way his lips worked as they formed words, seemed just slightly off-kilter somehow.

“What would you have done in their situation Mr Lassiter?”

“I would have stopped to see what I could do to help and I would have called emergency services.” That was, to Scott’s way of thinking, the only thing to do in that sort of situation.

“You see? That’s where you and I are on the same page. You render aid. If aid is not possible, you might even get a guilty conscience and just scamper on your way. It happens from time to time. I spent twenty-five years with the Highway Patrol. I saw more accidents than I ever want to think about.”

The strangers around the table were all looking at Cullie, staring hard, their silence filling the air with tension.

“What your friends here did, however, was first check to see if the wounded animal was alive, and then torture it to death.”

Eric looked at his three hunting buddies, his normally stoic face showing disgust. Scott looked at them and shook his head. “That’s not possible. They wouldn’t do that.”

“Didn’t go so well for all of you guys on that hunting trip, did it? I believe you and your friend Anthony were the only ones who managed to bag a deer.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So all I can figure was that they didn’t want to go home empty handed. They backed their car off of the wounded wolf.” And here he paused and looked at each of them men who were in the hunting party before he continued. His face when he stared at Eric and Scott was calm and conversational. His expression changed substantially when he stared at the other three, as if the only thing stopping him from killing them right then and there was the lack of a handgun.

“When they saw what they’d hit, George actually wanted to call 9-1-1. He reached for his phone and he started dialing.” Those deep blue eyes stared hard at George, who looked down and shook his head, blinking his eyes against tears. “Before he could finish, Cullie Landers said he had a better idea.” And again the eyes moved, staring hard at Cullie, who stared back defiantly. The two men locked gazes and while it took several seconds, Cullie finally looked away. “Cullie thought it would be fun to play with the poor thing, to make it suffer a bit more and then to take the pelt home with him.”

The man turned and looked at Scott again, his features once more softening from what looked like homicidal rage. “There are laws against it, of course, but what the hell, maybe he could get it treated.” A shrug of broad shoulders. “It might have worked out that George won the argument. Your friend George seems like a decent enough man. But then Mark Loman decided he wouldn’t mind having a prize himself.”

The man moved across the side of the table until he was inches away from Mark. Mark was hyperventilating. He was sweating enough to look greasy, his dark hair was plastered to his skull, and he trembled.

“What was it you took, again, Loman? The head, I believe?”

Cullie roared when he opened his mouth again. “It was a fucking dog! Who cares?”

All six of the men around them did something completely unexpected. They growled. Not a little low noise like clearing the throat, but a deep rumble that came from their chests as their lips peel back from the teeth.

The leader spoke again. “Show them, John. Show them why we would care about a ‘dog’.”

One of the men with him stepped forward and quickly unbuttoned his shirt, setting it aside. Scott and his friends all watched while the man disrobed completely, down to nothing but his underwear.

The man was lean and hard, athletic enough but definitely not a body builder. Scott, who tended to work out regularly, was about the same height and had him by easily thirty pounds of muscle.

John stared directly at Cullie, his face still set in a sneer, and started breathing fast. His breaths were almost silent at first, but then there was a light whimper followed by a full-out groan.

Scott watched it happen, every last second of it, his mind frozen, his eyes bulging.

The man threw his head back and gasped and as he did so, his skin split, tearing like thick paper and revealing a different shape beneath its surface. There was no long drawn out process as he’d seen in several movies, there was simply a sudden growth spurt as the average sized man became something entirely different.

What shook off the shredded remains of a human being was a werewolf, one that stood easily seven-and-a-half-feet tall, and had to weigh at least a hundred pounds more than the man it had replaced.

The guy with the ponytail kept speaking, while every one of the hunters who’d been called to pay a debt scrambled away from the beast looming over Cullie.

“Wolfmen, werewolves, lycanthropes, whatever you want to call us, gentlemen, we’re very real.” He moved forward and looked the beast in the eyes. Scott could only stare in awe, but his friend Eric had a different look on his face. Eric looked like a man who’d just had an epiphany.

“Sweet Jesus,” Mark spoke softly, his voice shaking.

“Keep your gods to yourself, thank you.” The man staring at the monster in front of him stepped back and the werewolf fell forward, onto its hands and knees, even as it once again became the man named John. John very calmly put his clothes back on, leaving behind the shredded underwear.

“Hate when I forget the briefs,” John muttered almost apologetically as he got himself back into his jeans.

“Would you like me to tell you the rest of the story now, gentlemen?” The obvious leader of the group settled down against one of the tables and crossed his arms. “This is the part where things get grisly, and since you wanted the truth, you’ll get it.”

He looked over at George when he spoke. “George wanted them to stop, but I guess he didn’t feel too strongly about the situation. Instead of making them leave the wolf alone, he lit a cigarette, grabbed himself a beer and went into the woods.

“So he didn’t get to see everything that Cullie and Mark did. He didn’t watch while they took turns cutting at the crippled animal on the ground.” The rumble was back in the man’s voice, a sound unsettlingly like a dog growling as it ate. “He was busy leaning against a tree and then puking his guts out when he heard the animal’s cries change.”

He pinned Cullie with his glare and continued again. “What gets me, what really amazes me above all else, is that your friends didn’t stop with the cutting when the wolf started to change shape.”

Mark was hyperventilating, his hands were clenched and his eyes were locked on the ground at his feet. Cullie was looking at the ground too, but more like he’d been caught in the act of doing something he wouldn’t have minded doing as long as no one knew about it. He looked more like a man accused of public masturbation than a murderer.

“When the change happens, there’s no mistaking that what you are dealing with is human. You saw that yourself a moment ago, gentlemen. But Mark and Cullie here? That didn’t stop them.”

He moved away from the edge of the table and looked at the two men. Turning his head from one to the other, his own breaths coming like a bellows stoking a furnace, he made sure to look them both over.

“In the very farthest stretches of polite society, it’s possible that someone could have overlooked their killing a wolf, even if they felt the need to torture it to death. But I ask you gentlemen, what do you think about your friends murdering a twenty-year-old woman?”

Eric shook his head; his face pale and sickly.

Scott felt his gag reflex try to force his recently consumed dinner into reverse and dry swallowed until the impulse vanished.

“Now, how about we add one more factor into the equation, one I’m sure neither of these fine, upstanding citizens decided to mention, even to George over here. The girl, my daughter and John’s wife, was pregnant when they hit her.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake you’ve got to be kidding.” The words were out of Scott’s mouth before he realized that he had spoken. The giant of a man turned on him and nailed him in place with a stare.

“I wish I were. I’m not. They murdered my daughter and my grandchildren, Mr Lassiter.” He walked closer until he was physically looking down at Scott. “They murdered her and then, to make sure no one would ever know, they dug her a shallow grave and buried her. On the bright side, at least your friend Loman was good enough to bury her head with the rest of her body.”

“How do you know all of this?” Eric spoke, as calmly as he could. He looked a little green around the gills, but still composed.

“I guess I edited the story a little. You see, they didn’t hit one wolf. They hit two. They just didn’t notice me when I crawled away to tend to my own wounds.” He looked over at Eric as he spoke. “We’re a hearty breed. We have to be. We can heal from almost any trauma, but it takes time. They’d shattered my hips and broken my back when the car hit me. Two days later I was fine, but until then, it took time to mend. Much as I wanted to stop them, to explain what they were doing, I couldn’t do anything but listen to the sounds they made.”

He moved again and this time he faced George, who was trembling. “That’s right. I had to listen while they murdered my little girl, same as you chose to listen. The difference is, you could have stopped them.”

George looked at the man and trembled, not from fear if Scott had to guess, but from shame. That was all it took to convince Scott that the werewolves were right.

Their leader turned around and walked away from George, effectively dismissing him.

“And there you have the story. It took me two days to get better. By then all of you were long gone, of course, but I took the time to memorize your scents, and then I started tracking. It took a long time. Longer than I want to think about, but it was worth it.”

“Look, this is all crazy!” Mark was pacing, upset and nervous. Even Scott could smell his fear. “You already killed Donna! You’ve had your fucking revenge. Just, just call this done and let us go!”

“We already discussed that, Loman. You killed your wife. Not me and not any of my friends. You did that by lying to me.”

“You fucking animal!” Mark had his fists clenched, his face set in a scowl, but Scott could see the tears threatening to fall from his eyes.

The man smiled at him. “Yes, actually, I am an animal. But because I don’t act like a rabid one, I’ve decided to give you a chance to survive the sadistic murder of my only daughter.” He moved from Mark to George and finally to Cullie as he spoke. “So here’s the deal, gentlemen; we’re going to blindfold you and take you out into the woods. Once we’re where we want you, we’re going to take off your blindfolds and give you a map. That map will show you a ten-mile long course. Once you are on your way, you’ll have one hour to get a head start, and then we are going to start hunting you.” His lips pressed into a thin, angry smile. “And if we catch you, we kill you. It’s that simple.”

“Wait a minute.” Eric spoke up, and shocked damned near everyone. “Wait one minute. That’s hardly what I’d call a fair fight, even with the head start.”

“True enough.” The big man looked Eric over and shrugged. “But it’s better than just ripping their throats out.”

“Give them a fighting chance at least.”

“Why? Have you ever given a deer a fighting chance?”

“Hell yeah. Normally I’m too drunk to shoot and smart enough to know it.”

The leader looked at him for a moment and then laughed. “I like you. Fine. They can each have one knife.”

“Still not very fair, you’ll all have teeth and claws.”

“They’ll have teeth, Captain. They may not be as sharp as ours, but they’ll have teeth. And as for claws, that’s why I’m allowing them each a hunting knife.”

“What about my kids?” Mark was sweating, but his eyes looked less panicked.

“What about them? You fulfilled your part of the agreement. They’re safe and they’ll remain that way, regardless of what happens in the woods.”

“How can I be sure?”

“You can’t. I’m not going to call and let you hear their voices. You’ll just have to accept that. In the meantime, I hope you brought good coats. It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

Eric looked like he wanted to say something; he was even opening and closing his mouth.

“Was there something else you wanted to ask, Captain?”

“I want to go with them.”

“Excuse me?” The man stared at Eric for several heartbeats. “Why would you want to go with them?”

“Because they’re my friends and the odds are stacked against them.”

“The odds were stacked against my daughter, too.”

“I know the risks…”

“Then think about your wife and your children! Don’t be a fool! If you go out with them, you’ll be as hunted as your friends. There will be no quarter given. Do you understand me?”

That shut Eric up, which was good, because if the man who’d set everything up didn’t stop him, Scott would have.

“Say goodbye to your friends, gentlemen, and wait here. Order something to eat if you’d like. My treat. One way or another, we’ll be back here in a few hours.” Having said those words, the leader turned to his men and all six of the strangers pressed in closer to George and Cullie and Mark.

A moment later, they were out the door and heading into the night. Eric and Scott sat down. The same woman who’d served them earlier came back and gave them menus while two older men bussed the tables all around them.

Scott resisted the urge to laugh. It was a little too surreal.

“They’re gonna die, you know that, right?” It was Eric speaking, but he sounded completely wrong. His voice sounded… hollow.

Scott sat still for a moment and thought about what they had done, how they had gotten into their present situation, and nodded. Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too busy worrying about Allison.

The three of them were shoved into the back of a police van, with benches built into the sides of the interior. Before they could do much by way of protesting, they were on their way, moving first down smooth asphalt and then after a series of turns that had them feeling rather seasick, they could feel the bounce and jostle that marked their change over from paved road to dirt trail.

None of them wanted to talk about it, so they sat in silence for most of the trip.

It was George who broke the silence. “I’m sorry about Donna.”

Mark nodded and then looked at the steel plates of the floorboards.

Cullie started crying. George thought about trying to comfort him, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. As much as he loved the men with him like they were brothers, he wouldn’t have been in the current situation if they’d listened to him.

He closed his eyes and remembered the damned night that he’d tried so hard to forget.

They’d all been wearing their street clothes, having traded out of their hunting gear when they left the campsite. It’d been a good time, even if only two of them had caught anything. Besides, Scott promised to send him a leg from the deer, and that was more than enough venison to keep him happy for a while.

He was thinking about the meat and how he’d roast it, what he’d use to marinate it, when they hit the wolf. She’d come out of nowhere, and he could remember the way the wheels lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped on the right hand side of the car even now.

He didn’t want to remember the rest. He didn’t want to think about the creature shuddering in the middle of the road in a thick smear of blood, or the way it snapped and whined as it lay dying. George wasn’t really much of a hunter. In all the years they’d been doing their annual trips, he’d never bagged a deer. He just couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger at the right moment.

And had Cullie gotten pissed when he tried to call the authorities? Oh, hell yes! Cullie’d thrown an absolute fit, because he was the one driving and the smell of beer was still strong enough to be an issue.

With his eyes closed against the flood of memories, George shook his head and grimaced, angry with himself now. Yes, he had told them to stop, had tried to speak reasonably, but in the long run, the asshole who’d taken Cheryl and beaten him down was absolutely right. He’d let Cullie and Mark do their thing, even knowing that it was wrong, because he always let them win the arguments. It was easier than trying to keep his cool.

And deep inside, down where he tried to hide the worst memories, he could remember the sounds that came from behind him as he chain-smoked a dozen cigarettes. If forced to admit the truth, yes, he heard the sounds of a woman screaming. No animal he’d ever encountered could have imitated that sound, and sure as shit, none of them could have begged for mercy.

So yes, he knew inside that he was at least partly to blame for the situation. He’d been afraid of cutting loose, of letting his temper get the best of him. He’d spent years in therapy for his anger management issues and it was hard to break that sort of training.

Still, he wouldn’t have given Cullie comfort in a million years.

The van finally came to a halt, and all of them leaned forward to counter the sudden change in speed. For a few moments longer, there was silence, but before any of them could grow bored with it, the doors were opened. Four men stood outside and waited for them to climb out.

Eventually, they did, but none of them were in much of a hurry.

The largest of the men, the one who was the obvious leader, stepped toward them and handed them each a hunting knife. The sheaths were well worn and tended to, obviously not new.

“It’s a last minute thing, gentlemen. Take them, use them.”

Cullie had managed to stop crying, but his nose still felt damp and his eyes were hot with irritation.

He looked at the big man and swallowed hard as he took the blade.

“Why don’t you let them go? Just take me. I’m the one that started it.” He said the words before he could lose his courage.

The man looked at him and shook his head. “You might have started it, but you didn’t finish it alone.”

The words hurt, but Cullie shook his head. “Then let George go. He didn’t do any of the cuttings. He tried to talk us out of it.”

“I’ve already made my decision, Landers. George had his part to play in all of this.”

Cullie nodded. The answers were exactly what he’d expected, but he at least had to try.

It was Mark that asked the next question. “What are the rules of this little game?”

“As I said before, there’s a spot ten miles down through the woods. If you reach that spot before we can kill you, you’re free. If we get to you first, you’re dead.” He made a point of looking at each of them, but Cullie felt the eyes on him for the longest span.

“John has a map. It’s accurate.” He nodded and the freak they’d watched change earlier handed the map to George. “There are five possible trails you can take, gentlemen, each has its own risks and advantages.” He shrugged. “You can decide amongst yourselves how you want to handle all of this.” The man looked at his thick left wrist and tapped his watch. “You have one hour, starting… now.”

Without another word, the strangers all climbed back into the van and drove away.

Cullie watched the taillights as they faded.

“Get over here, Cullie. We need to get to work.” George didn’t even look at him as he spoke. He just unfolded the map and started looking it over. When Cullie got a look at it, he groaned: it was a topographer’s map, clearly showing the elevation for the surrounding area. There was a small red arrow marked on one of the roads, and another red mark, shaped like a cross, almost a foot away.

They each looked at the map and studied it as carefully as they could, painfully aware of the time that was passing.

While the other two were looking at distances and topography, Cullie made up his mind. “Okay. I’m going this way. You guys do your own thing.”

Mark looked at him sharply. George shook his head and got an I-knew-it look on his face.

“What the hell are you talking about, Cullie?” Mark stared hard at him.

“I mean it’s better if we split up. At least one of us might make it that way. Good luck.”

Before either of them could try to talk him out of it, he started moving. Cullie had been hunting with his father since he was a child, and he knew how to move through the woods. Part of his reason for separating from them was exactly the reason he claimed. The other part was simply that he knew he could move faster without them.

Neither of them tried to stop him as he left. Part of him wished they would have.

The rain started about five minutes after Cullie left. By then George and Mark were both on their way. Much as they hated to agree with Cullie, it seemed best to break up. Mark said it best. “Either they’re going to kill us or they aren’t. Not really a lot we can do to defend ourselves with or without each other as back up. If we split up, maybe they will too.”

He wished George the best of luck and then ran, sliding down into the lower woods on the side of the road and heading for the most direct path through the forest. He knew there were risks. The path showed the least obstacles and the most direct route, but he had to hope that meant he could get more of the ten miles covered faster. He was athletic enough that he thought he could make the full distance if he concentrated and kept a steady pace.

The path that was marked on the map was fairly easy to see, right up until the time the rain started coming down. It wasn’t exactly a torrential downpour, but it was fast and heavy enough to run into his eyes and blur everything ahead of him.

The chill seeped into his clothing, ran through the layers of fabric in no time and then into his skin. Mark did his best to ignore the sensations as he started to run, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, just like Coach Walker had taught him back when he was a runner.

In a very short time he’d developed a good rhythm and a better pace. All he had to do now was make sure he didn’t fall and break his fool neck as he moved through the woods. Even with a path, there were a lot of obstacles.

Off behind him and to the right, he heard the sound of George jogging along. Like Mark, he’d apparently decided the best way to live was to cover some serious distance. Unlike Mark, he was wearing a thinner coat that was waterproof. “Lucky bastard.”

It happened sooner than he expected. In what seemed like only minutes, he heard the howl of the things in hot pursuit. When Mark looked back he realized the road was long gone from his view, hidden by the trees and the shape of the land, but he knew where the howls came from.

They were long and low and mournful, the sounds he’d heard far more often in movies than he ever had in real life, and they froze him in his tracks.

It was beginning now and he had no point of reference, no idea how far he’d run. He could only pray it was far enough.

His name was Roland Weilland, and he was a werewolf. Roland had led the local pack for a long time, both in light of his command abilities and because he was still the fastest and meanest of them.

He folded his clothes neatly, placing them inside the police wagon. When he was completely stripped, he placed his books on the clothes to weigh them down. The air was just above freezing and getting colder by the second as the storm moved deeper into the area, but he barely noticed it as he stood and looked down at the woods below.

John was looking at him, his face set in lines of anger. John still wasn’t thrilled with the decision to make this a hunt instead of merely killing the humans that had done in his wife. He didn’t understand the reasons for it, and in all fairness, Roland hadn’t shared them.

He wanted a hunt because he could feel his younger charges growing restless. They had everything they needed, including secrecy, and several of the men folk had started taking up new hobbies to stop themselves from going mad with boredom.

Settling down had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe they weren’t meant to sit still and get jobs; it was the human way, not the way of werewolves. But damn it, it had made sense. It was harder to hide yourself when the world around you kept changing.

He let the beast free and reveled in the sudden pain of transformation. His form didn’t grow slowly, but in a sudden explosion of cellular activity. Bones shifted and muscles stretched to accommodate a new position; his teeth swelled inside a growing mouth and his nails thickened even as his hands took on a new shape.

When he yelled to release the pain, his voice had changed and the sound quickly became a roar. Dead skin fell away from his body as he shrugged and his fur pushed out from beneath. In a matter of seconds, Roland and his charges were all in their truest form, breathing in the cold night air and shaking away the freezing precipitation that pelted their hides.

They did not need words to understand him. Their eyes could see the expressions he made, the simply gestures he used were easily recognized. “We hunt,” he said. “Pick your prey.”

John did exactly as he expected, and chased after the lingering scent of the human called Cullie Landers. He chose the trail that Mark Loman had taken. John wanted the man who had started the desecration of his wife. Roland wanted the man who had ensured her complete death by hacking through his daughter’s neck until her head fell away.

The rest left to go after George Heatherly.

As he moved, he called out for the hunt to begin. The others responded, their voices mingling with his and echoing off the trees around them.

He followed the scent of fear Mark Loman had left behind, taking his time. The man was running, and would probably get careless. More importantly, the man was scared.

He had every reason to be afraid. Roland intended to kill him, and to date no one had ever escaped from the leader of the group when he went on a hunt.

Eric Fulford stood up and walked toward the restrooms, his eyes shifting constantly to see who was near him and whether or not he could make a break for the door.

He was not being hunted, true enough, but he also didn’t know if he trusted the man who’d said they would be safe. Want to know what will make a soldier paranoid? When every single person left in the diner looks at him as if he were potentially a meal.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was very possible that every single person left in the place was a werewolf.

Instead of going for the bathroom doors, Eric made a sharp right turn and pushed through the front exit of the building. No one came after him, despite his fear.

The air had grown a lot colder and the road outside was starting to turn white under a layer of ice. For a moment he thought about running for his car and driving off to find his family, but one look around stopped him. The biggest problem was simply that he had no idea where his family was being kept.

The door opened a moment later and Scott coughed into his hand rather than trying to touch him.

“You all right, Eric?”

“No.” He shrugged. “How can I be all right? I want my family back.” He looked back at Scott and saw the same desire in his friend’s eyes.

“Listen, I figure if that guy wanted us dead, we’d be in the middle of the woods right now.” He paused a moment and they both heard the sound of distant howls carried by the wind. They couldn’t have proved a damned thing, but Eric knew they were both thinking the hunt might have just begun. “I want to help them too, Eric. But you have Sarah and the kids to think about and I have Allison.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that.” Eric nodded and looked back at his friend. “I’ll accept his reasons for all of this, but if he did anything at all to Sarah or the kids, I swear I’ll kill every last one of them.”

Scott shook his head. “I don’t think they did anything to them except maybe settle them down somewhere and keep them locked up.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he seems like a fair enough guy. I think maybe he doesn’t even like what he’s done so far, but you know what? I think if I was in his shoes, I might have just gone and killed everyone instead of checking first.”

Eric looked hard at Scott, surprised by the comment. “Really?”

“Seriously. What would you do if someone had killed Sarah like that?”

He nodded.

“I hope you’re right.”

“All I know for sure is he sounded sincere. And I think if he wanted everyone dead, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. He gave them an out. Maybe not much of one, but he gave them something.”

“What I don’t get is he said his daughter went back to her human form when she… when they killed her. So why not report it to the police?”

Scott shivered a bit and coughed a plume of steam into the air before he answered. “Too many questions.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t mean official questions. No matter what shape she took, it would have been easy enough for him to find the evidence. He could have said he was an eyewitness and I bet most of the people in this county would take one look at his record on the highway patrol and side with him in a court. But if they’re trying to hide what they are, and George and the others said they hit a wolf and we’re so sorry and all of that crap, it would have made somebody look twice, maybe a reporter from a piece of crap like the Enquirer or maybe someone from the local news. Whatever the case, it might have started rumors.”

“No one would believe them.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t think I’d take chances like that if I was a werewolf, or whatever.”

“Given this a lot of thought, have you?” He looked at Scott and gave a small grin.

“Not really a lot else to do right now.”

“You think they have a chance in hell, Scott?”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought too, and I don’t really know if I care anymore.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious, dude.” Scott looked at him hard, and the innocent expression he was used to seeing was completely erased, covered over with anger. “I don’t care if they started on a wolf or not, they killed a pregnant woman and then they hid that fact away. That makes them about as low as anyone can get in my book, Eric.”

“What about George?”

“What about him? He should have stopped it from happening and he didn’t. I don’t care if they were both bigger and meaner than him, Eric, and you know he could have at least taken out Cullie. He should have stopped them and instead he went where he didn’t have to watch.”

Eric nodded. Much as he felt like he was betraying his friends, he also understood exactly how Scott was feeling.

“Okay, so even with the risk of being marked as a werewolf, he could have reported the murder.”

“Let’s forget the fact he was stuck for two days in the woods while he healed himself. Let’s forget all about that and pretend he was just a witness. Have you noticed what happens to a lot of the murderers out there, Eric?”

“A lot of them get the chair, especially for murdering and torturing a pregnant girl.”

“A lot of them get to sit on death row for fifteen or twenty years and their families get to reflect on why the asshole who murdered their loved one isn’t dead yet.”

“But they get killed eventually.”

“And a lot of them paint pictures, and write books and get released from death row because the laws were changed.” Scott shrugged.

“I thought you were opposed to the death penalty anyway.”

“I am. Mostly. If someone’s innocent, they shouldn’t fry. If a society convicts and then kills an innocent man, then the society is no better than the person who committed the crime in the first place. But this is different.”

“How is it different?”

“They all confessed. They tortured a pregnant woman to death.”

“You sure you aren’t letting Allison’s pregnancy color your views?”

“I don’t really care if I am. All I have to do is think of her in the same boat and I know I’d want all three of them dead myself. Especially if I watched them do it.”

“So you think he just doesn’t like the chances of all three of them going to death row?”

“He’s not after justice, Eric. He’s after revenge. I can’t blame him. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

Eric sighed and headed for the door. “Neither can I, damn it.”

Not a person inside had left their seats, but the tension he’d felt earlier seemed to have gone away. If the people were waiting for him to make a break for it, he guessed they felt a little more comfortable about his staying where he belonged now.

Part of him still wanted to find his wife and kids, but he decided he could wait it out for now. In the long run, he didn’t really have much choice in the matter anyway.

All he could do was wait, and wonder whether or not he should pray for the safety of his friends.

Cullie was panting like a dog when the howls started up. He was taking a much-needed breather and trying not to freeze his balls off when the sound hit him and sent feverish chills running down his back.

“I get out of this alive, I swear I’ll kill George.” It was a hollow threat, but it made him feel better. George was always trying to do what he thought was right, like narcing them all out at the diner, which had led Cullie to his current predicament.

Well, okay, and killing the wolf when it turned into a pregnant girl.

He started moving again, and as he did, he replayed the most powerful memory of his life. It had been cold that night and the wolf had steamed as the blood flowed from multiple lacerations. The animal was beyond being helped, but she had a beautiful pelt, at least the parts that weren’t soaked in blood. For the first time ever, he couldn’t resist the temptation.

As soon as they were out of the car and assessing the damage — the good news was that the dent on the front end was minor — George had pulled out his cell phone and started looking to see if he had good enough reception. Cullie’d snatched the phone out of his hands before he could do more than blink, and started on the browbeating.

The good thing about George was he was wishy-washy. Five minutes was all it took in most cases to convince him to change his tune, and with Mark helping it hadn’t even taken that long.

But he’d still wussed out and refused to take part in the fun.

There was a part of Cullie that had always wanted to be in a situation that allowed him to try torture. He was just drunk enough that night and as an added bonus, so was Mark. Okay, so he had to give Mark the head, but it didn’t matter.

Cullie took his time making the right cuts, not because he wasn’t in a hurry, but because the sensations he got as he started skinning the wolf alive were downright erotic. He’d never had a problem with getting laid, but this? Cutting the wolf made sex seem like a pale imitation.

Was it sick? Yes, but he didn’t care. He liked it.

He kept liking it, too, up until the moment the wounded animal became a woman. He was watching when it happened, amazed by the sudden transformation. One second he was peeling the fur from the broken right forepaw of a bloodied, oversized dog and the next his hands were gripping the soft, almost velvety flesh of a girl in her prime.

Mark had staggered back, shocked by the change. Cullie would have probably backed off, too, but at that moment he experienced the most shattering orgasm of his entire life. While his friend was screaming in shock it covered Cullie’s own yelp of pleasure.

Either the girl was beyond the ability to speak, or he didn’t want to remember her words. Either way, he sped up the cutting, not giving himself a chance to change his mind. There was no way the girl would live through what they had done and no way he wanted to stop now that he’d started. Without a second thought, he ran the skinning knife down her belly all the way to the edge of her sex and before Mark had even begun recovering from the shock, he gave a savage pull. Flesh peeled away just as easily on a human as it did on a deer. The difference was the deer would have been dead already and he would have missed the sounds of the girl screaming in pain.

The best part, the thing he would never admit to anyone, was how pleasantly surprised he was to realize she was still alive, even after he’d finished skinning her. Even thinking back on it, even in his current situation, he felt himself get aroused.

The thoughts were pushed out of his head when he heard the sound of a branch snapping in the distance. It wasn’t close by, but it was definitely closer than he wanted to think about.

Cullie cursed under his breath and started moving faster, his eyes keeping careful track of the land in front of him.

After the incident was finished, Cullie thought long and hard about whether or not he’d ever be able to kill another person and enjoy it the same way. He thought he would, and he’d been preparing for that possibility. Medical books can show you the most amazing things, like which clusters of nerves are most vulnerable to blunt force, and which tendons would cause crippling. He didn’t know if he’d ever get a chance to use his new skills, but he surely did hope so.

He also didn’t know if the same spots would be vulnerable on the monster he thought was tracking him, but he prayed so with all of his heart.

The rain started coming down even harder, the cold drops hitting like pebbles now instead of just splashing against his skin. It didn’t take much to let him see that the centers of the drops were turning into ice.

If he was lucky, really, lucky, the rain would wash away his scent and make it harder for the things in the woods to find him. He wasn’t counting on it, but he could hope.

His left foot slipped in the slush that was falling and Cullie took a spill into the ravine to his right. He tried to catch his balance and failed, rolling down in an uneven bounce that seemed exactly rough enough to keep him from grabbing hold of anything to slow his descent. Despite the thick layer of dead plants that coated the ground, rocks and branches still beat into him to the point where he finally gave up and pulled himself into a rough fetal position with his hands covering his face to avoid any more grievous injury.

He came to a halt in cold, running water and sputtered as he felt the runoff cover his face. He rose as quickly as he could, shivering and spitting the water from his mouth along the way.

“Fuck me! What the hell kind of shit is this?” All of his thoughts of surviving the night evaporated in an instant, replaced by the sudden realization that he was in the middle of nowhere and would be lucky if anyone even realized he was missing.

Up above, where he’d been standing a moment ago, he saw movement through the surrounding trees. Cullie did his best impersonation of a statue, forcing his muscles to stay still despite the chill.

His eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness as best they could and he saw the beast as it moved into view. In the center of the diner he’d been too stunned to really see much of anything, but watching as it moved from a distance he could see the play of muscles moving under fur, the impossibility of its shape and the unsettling grace with which it moved.

He could also see with perfect clarity when it suddenly turned its head and looked down the hill for him.

“Oh, God, no.”

The teeth of the black furred beast stood out remarkably well as it grinned and looked him in the eyes.

Cullie turned and ran, his feet lifting and splashing down into the cold stream of run off, as he did his best to escape. What in God’s name had he been thinking when he was toying with actually trying to hurt that thing?

“Ohgodohgodohgodohpleasegod.”

The monster dropped to all fours and bounded toward the stream, its forepaws almost looked like hands, but its hind paws were designed for pushing and clawing.

The thing leaped and cleared the last twenty feet, splashing down five yards in front of him.

“I swear I didn’t know! I thought it was just a dog! I know I was wrong, but I didn’t know any better!”

Hot tears spilled from his eyes, washed across his face in thin lines of warmth as the creature came closer. When it was in front of him, it rose on its hind legs and studied him with deep green eyes that showed no sign of mercy.

Cullie was still crying when he pulled the knife from its sheath. “Fine. Come on then, you fucking pussy!”

The werewolf lunged, growling deep in its chest, and he swung the hunting knife hard and low, trying to cut through its defenses. The blade glazed the long torso of the creature: its claws ripped into his jacket, tearing through the heavy padding and taking close to a yard of material with them.

Barely believing his luck, Cullie swung again and this time felt the blade push through the thick fur and slice deep into the monster’s muscles. The beast grunted and twisted, taking the knife from his grip as it fell back. Blood drooled from the wound, and the black furred nightmare carefully gripped the handle in a hand never designed to carry a weapon of that size. It looked like something from a kid’s play set in that massive paw.

Barely even letting himself think, Cullie charged and slammed his shoulder into the creature’s side, staggering it. The werewolf rolled onto its back and snarled as it hauled the hunting knife’s eight-inch blade from its ribcage.

He didn’t know if the wound was fatal or not, he just knew he couldn’t take any chances. Cullie swung his fist hard and slammed it into the creature’s armpit, pounding at the spot where a nerve cluster would be on a human body. The creature let out another yowl as it dropped the hunting knife, and Cullie dove for the blade.

The weapon fell into the cold waters and he reached for it, his hand scrabbling, touching first the sharpened blade — that sliced into his ring finger and his middle finger — and then grasping the hilt again.

At exactly the same time he wrapped his hand around the weapon’s grip, the teeth of the monster sank into his foot and his calf, pushing through clothing like it was air and then driving together, cutting past flesh and meat and shoe with remarkable speed. Cullie was dropping the blade and screaming around the same time the werewolf ripped his Achilles tendon away from his body.

Frigid water mingled with hot blood as Cullie flopped into the stream, clutching at his ruined leg with both hands.

The werewolf shook off his hide, reversing the transformation until the man he knew as John was looking at him, panting, bleeding from his chest, and grinning around a mouthful of Cullie’s leg. He spat the piece of meat away and swayed, naked in the cold night air.

“I thought a big hunter like you would be a challenge, Landers.” His form was human again, but the words were still a growl. “I thought you’d do more than scratch me.”

Cullie shivered, his hands the only part of him that felt warm as blood flowed from his leg. “Just go ahead and kill me! Get it done!”

“No. Not yet. I’m going to watch you die slowly for a while, and then when I’m sick of looking at you, I’ll finish the job.”

Cullie reached into the waters a second time, wincing at the pain in his entire leg, and grabbed the hunting knife. The naked man stepped closer, smiling.

“You gonna’ try to kill me, Landers? I’m right here.”

“F-fuck you!”

He squatted, not five feet out of Cullie’s reach and shook his head. “I’m right here, big boy.” His voice was a calculated taunt, and Cullie knew it, but he still wanted to live and he wanted the man dead almost as much. “Prove to me that you’re really a man. Prove to me that you can do something other than torture a woman to death.” John shrugged. “Do that, and maybe I’ll let you live.”

Cullie thought hard about that, and even as he thought, he repositioned himself in the cold water. He didn’t stand, but he put most of his weight on his good leg, trying to decide if he could reach the man in front of him and hit him with the blade before John could change again.

“That’s right, Landers… What have you got to lose? You might be able to get me, might cut my throat before I can do anything about it. You know you want to. You know if you wait too long, the blood loss will do you in, so come on… Come and get me.”

Cullie pushed off with his good leg, and much as it hurt, he used his wounded limb to add a touch of support before he was airborne. John started moving at almost the exact same second. The distance between them grew smaller until, at last, Cullie brought the knife down, his aim was flawless and the blade plunged toward his enemy’s throat. John was faster than he looked. The weathered hands caught Cullie’s wrist and twisted hard before the knife could finish its descent. Cullie let out a yelp of frustration and then he let out a squeal of pain as his body was thrown down and he hit the rough stones John had been crouching over.

The impact was much greater than Cullie’d expected. His front tooth splintered as it hit the rock and he let out a grunt of pain as his nose and lips were dragged across the stone. He coughed hard and tried to roll over, but before he could, John was on him. The man pulled hard at his good foot and yanked his shoe away. A second later the maniac pulled what was left of his other shoe from his other foot and Cullie almost blacked out from the exquisite pain. While he was still trying to recover from that, John reached out and pulled at his belt until it came loose. Then his pants and his underwear were next.

Cullie bucked and panicked, convinced that the man was going to rape him. He imagined the pain and humiliation and screamed, pushing with good leg and bad alike to get away from the mad man standing naked above him in the cold waters. John’s bare foot slammed into the small of his back and knocked him back down, half drowning him before the man moved away from him.

“You stink, Landers. You smell as bad as you look.”

“You get away from me you sick fuck!” Cullie’s voice broke and he started pushing up from the water again, desperate to get away from the madman he knew was going to sodomize him.

“Not a chance.” John reached out and grabbed the back of his jacket, pulling hard. Cullie was lifted half out of the water before the ruined material let out a rude noise and fell away from him, dropping him once more into the rapidly swelling run off.

“Oh God! Please!” He was crying again, as John came closer, the knife that Cullie’d been ready to use on him now held casually in his left hand.

Cullie looked over his shoulder in stark terror, ready to do anything this man wanted him to in order to avoid what he knew was coming.

The smile had left John’s face, and the rain that fell was beginning to stick in his hair, to freeze there. He dropped down on his knees behind Cullie and grabbed his good leg, clenching his fingers and digging deep into flesh. Cullie tried to kick with his other leg, but it lacked the strength to stop his attacker.

Without another word, John brought the knife around and in two deft strokes had cut a circle around Cullie’s ankle. Cullie shrieked again and tried to pull away with the strength of his arms, but the blade had done to his good leg what the monster’s teeth had already accomplished on the other side. He lacked the power to escape.

John leaned back for a second; his face a little pale, and shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. You think I want to fuck you. You’re wrong.”

Despite his situation, the panic level lowered itself a bit, and Cullie crawled forward a few paces, solely because John let him.

“If you were the only woman left on the planet and looked like a Playboy Bunny, I still wouldn’t want you that way.” John stood again and came closer, his flesh shivering in the cold.

“You just relax yourself, Cullie Landers. This is gonna’ hurt.” He moved forward again and this time when he grabbed for a limb, it was Cullie’s left arm. Cullie fought, he swung with his free arm and kicked as best he could with both of his legs. John pinned his left hand in the water and ignored the blows, barely even flinching when he was struck in the side of his face.

Then he started cutting, tearing through the tendons in Cullie’s wrist with ease. “Figured you deserve what you did to my girl, Landers.”

He slapped Cullie with a savage backhand that knocked the wind right the hell out of his sails and moved to grab his one unmarred limb before he could recover.

Cullie screamed all the louder as the blade cut skin and tendon again.

John sat back, panting from his efforts, and stared hard at him for a moment.

“Make you one last deal, you sick fuck. If you can get up and walk away when I’m done skinning you alive, I’ll let you alone.”

Cullie kept screaming until he blacked out.

George heard every sound, every scream that echoed through the woods, and he did his best to ignore them.

He knew that somewhere downstream, Cullie was dying, and he ground his teeth together, wishing he could shut out the sounds.

Cullie had fallen across the waters in the gulley by accident; George found them deliberately, hoping that the frigid stream would mask his scent. He’d seen at least a dozen movies where it worked for prisoners, but never had a reason to test whether or not it really had any affect, at least not until now.

At a guess, he’d made it around half way to where he needed to be. The rain was coming down too hard for him to even consider looking at the map. All he knew was that they’d used a cross to mark whatever the final destination was supposed to be.

He didn’t allow himself to think or strategize; he refused himself the luxury of panic. He simply ran, doing his best to forget everything that had happened back in the woods when he’d let them do what they did to the girl.

Instead he focused his attention on the simple task of moving one foot in front of the other as the cold sapped his energy and the freezing rain fell on his balding head and clothes. It was all he could do if he wanted to survive, and he wanted that desperately.

What had started as rain and moved into freezing rain continued to change, falling slower now, as a mix of hard ice pellets and snowflakes. He kept sloshing through the water, breathing hard and doing his best not to fall on his face in the growing current.

Cheryl would hate him, of course. Even if he lived through all of this, he knew he couldn’t keep her in his life. There was no doubt in his mind that one or more of the monsters would have told her why this was all happening. The one in charge struck him as exactly the sort that would enjoy the theatrics of telling her the gory details.

“No one to blame but yourself, George. Just you remember that.” He spoke to himself, a habit he’d picked up a long time ago, when he decided it was time to get help for his anger issues.

At age fourteen, he started letting himself go, and got into a lot of trouble at school. It was seldom a week went by without him getting into it with someone. By sixteen, he wasn’t just overreacting to situations anymore; he was starting a lot of the fights. By his second semester in college, he decided it was time to do something about his rage. He hadn’t just hurt a kid he decided to fight with — he’d hospitalized him.

When the fight was done he turned himself in to the authorities and faced the consequences of his actions, not because he felt he was in the wrong exactly but because he was afraid of what he might do the next time he lost his temper.

George caught his foot on a loose stone and fell into the water, landing on his ass. Any hope he’d had of keeping his privates warm was immediately destroyed, and the cold that had been gnawing at his flesh sank teeth deep into his bones as he rose from his fallen position.

He thought about heading for the shore, but still liked his chances better down in the water. That decision didn’t make moving in sodden clothes any easier and neither did the chill that refused to leave him.

He’d gone another hundred or so yards when he was first aware of the lights up ahead. Red and blue strobes started splashing the trees and the ravine alike and George stopped for a second, completely shocked by the sudden light.

After a moment he realized there was a bridge up ahead, nothing fancy, but still an unexpected surprise. It didn’t take him long to realize there was a road running through the area, but he couldn’t remember seeing it on the map of the area and he wasn’t about to check at the moment.

The bridge looked like an old concrete piece from the depression era, complete with rusted guardrails, one of which had been ruined. A black shape that strongly resembled the silhouette of a small car’s front end could be seen dangling over the side, along with the mangled railing. It was from behind that particular obstacle that the lights originated.

He was tempted, so damned tempted, to go up and see if he could ask the cop for help, but he knew there was no way in hell the police in the area would believe there were monsters after him and there was Cheryl to consider.

When he stumbled and fell into the water the second time, he decided he’d ask for help anyway. Shivering violently, he scrabbled up the side of the ravine’s incline, clutching at whatever he could to keep from sliding back down. By the time he’d reached the side of the road he’d managed to drive several thorns into his hands and knees, but he didn’t dare stop.

The road was covered in a thickening layer of ice and George understood immediately what had happened. There had been a one-car accident and either by use of cell phone or by blind luck, the police had shown up.

His eyes ached with every pulse of the police car’s lights, and he squinted against the glare as he moved toward the vehicles and the three people standing outside of them. One was a woman dressed in a thin coat and a formal dress. She was shivering in the cold as one of the police officers took down her information. She might have been in the car, but judging by how much of her vehicle had left the road and was now dangling over the side of the bridge, it was probably wisest to freeze instead of risking a seventy-foot drop to the bottom of the ravine.

There were two cops, both far better dressed for the weather, and both busy with the task at hand. George could have wept at the sight of them.

“Hey… ” His voice sounded too weak for them to hear so he yelled. “Hey! Can I get some help?” He called out as he moved closer and saw all three people turn to face him. The lights kept their faces hidden in shadows, but he imagined they were surprised to see him.

“Where the hell did you come from?” That came from the larger of the two policemen, a six-foot-tall man with a build like an armchair quarterback.

“I was down there.” He pointed down to the ravine.

“What were you doing down there?” the younger officer asked. He looked like he was in better shape.

“I’m being chased, and I need to get away from here.”

“Well, we’re in the middle of an accident investigation, but if you want to wait a few minutes we’ll see what we can do.” The older cop stepped forward enough to let George catch a glimpse of a round face and a thin mustache as he spoke. “We’re a little thin on help right now, there’s been a lot of fender-benders tonight, but if you can be patient, we’ll find out what’s going on.” He sounded friendly enough, but George could tell he was less worried about what might be after him than he was about making sure George wasn’t actually just a mental case traipsing through the woods. George really couldn’t blame him for that, but his sense of urgency hadn’t changed.

Still, he had to try to explain without sounding like he was, in fact, a mental patient and that was going to be tricky. He couldn’t just say a pack of werewolves wanted him dead, after all. Even thinking about the beast he’d seen in the diner was enough to make him want to wet himself. Maybe bears would work as an explanation.

“I’m pretty sure there were bears down there, and they seemed sort of ticked off.”

“Bears? This time of year?” That was the younger cop again. He shook his head and frowned. “They should all be hibernating. What? Did you go looking in a cave and find them?”

“All I know is whatever they are, they’re big and hairy and growl.”

He could see the look of disbelief on the man’s face and he also got to witness that same expression change as he looked behind George and looked up.

George turned just in time to see the monsters coming. All the time he’d thought he was safe had been a mistake. The werewolves came over the side of the bridge one after the other, easily leaping over the railing and landing in the shadows of the road.

There were four of the things all told, massive shadows one second and equally large nightmares the next. Every time the lights from the cruiser hit them their eyes flared with the reflected glow and their bared teeth gleamed in red or blue.

“Mister, those aren’t bears.” The young cop was staring and had reached for his weapon.

The older cop already had his drawn. “Move out of the way!”

He didn’t have to tell George twice. He bolted for the squad car and prayed he’d have no trouble getting there.

The werewolves moved forward, two of them on their hind legs, and two on all fours. They didn’t move fast, but crept at a casual pace, as if deciding what, exactly, they wanted to do about the policemen.

The younger officer finally got his weapon clear of the holster and pointed it at the closest bestial face. The werewolf looked at the business end of the service revolver and bared his teeth even wider as he let out a warning growl.

“You be a good boy and we won’t have to kill you.” The kid was nervous, but his hands were steady.

The werewolf stood still for a moment and then rose up to its full height. The cop kept his grip on the revolver and kept it sited on the powerful chest of the thing now standing fully a foot taller than him.

As for the woman next to her ruined car, she was staring at the animals with wide eyes and a fearful tremble running through her entire body.

The werewolf closest to the younger cop reached out its paw and placed it gently over both of the hands holding the firearm. And then it spoke in a voice that was garbled, but understandable. “I know you, Sam Farber. We want the stranger. Leave this place and we will leave you in peace.”

The younger officer, Sam Farber apparently, stared hard at the monstrous face and shook his head, refusing to believe what he had just heard. While he was doing the unreality shuffle, the werewolf plucked the weapon from his hand and moved past him.

The other cop, older and more experienced, was just as stunned. “Hey, give him back his gun.” He might have been trying to speak with authority, but what came out of his mouth was a nervous whisper.

The woman was staring at the beasts as they walked, and one of them looked at her, returning the gaze. She was dwarfed by the thing, which did nothing but look at her.

It might have all gone differently if the older cop hadn’t finally snapped out of his shock and taken aim at the closest monster. The furry head turned sharply and vulpine lips that had been slowly calming down peeled back from the wicked looking teeth as it snarled.

The cop pulled the trigger on his revolver again and again and George looked on as dark red blossoms of meat and viscera flew from the back of the werewolf.

The monster staggered back, pushed by the force of the bullets ripping through its chest and shoulder, crying out with a sound like locked tires sliding on rough asphalt.

Even as it fell, all of its partners started moving. The one that had been staring at the woman next to her car leaned down almost as if it planned to kiss her and then bit into her face with an audible crunching noise. If she screamed, it was hidden inside the sounds of bones breaking.

One of the beasts that had stayed on all fours, bolted forward, bounding over its fallen brethren, and hit the older cop in the chest with both front claws. The palms of the beast’s hands pushed hard and the talons at the end of each finger sank in deeply, past the coat and the uniform below and into skin and meat. Even as the officer fell back, the thick nails of the creature pulled away and took a few pounds of flesh.

The werewolf that had taken away the younger cop’s revolver turned fast and sank its teeth into the young man’s shoulder and neck, savagely shaking back and forth as it worried the new wound. The rookie screamed, a lot.

George took one quick look at the squad car and opened the driver’s side door. The engine was running, the keys were in place and the werewolves were busy. Three seconds later, he was inside and revving the engine.

The wounded werewolf stood back up and let loose a growl that shook its entire body. The one on the older policeman stepped forward and dropped down on top of the bloodied man and began tearing into him, shredding clothing and flesh with powerful hands before sinking teeth deep into the wound and ripping away at what looked like part of a heart and a lung. The officer’s chest had bloomed like a bizarre flower that steamed in the cold night air.

The young cop was still screaming, bucking and trying to get away from the snarling giant that tore the wound in his shoulder into a lethal hole.

The woman was dead; her body sliding down as the werewolf pulled away from her, chewing at whatever prize it had pulled from her face.

George shifted into drive then hit the gas. The squad car jumped forward, slamming into the furry shape that loomed over the older cop and then driving over the dead man and the snarling nightmare alike. The tires spun against the cold, icy road and caught extra traction as they ran over both forms.

He wasn’t thinking at all, really, just doing his best to get away from the madness. The gun-wounded werewolf didn’t seem to see it that way. It lifted its good arm and brought it down with a hammer blow that caved in the front of the squad car’s hood and rocked the vehicle on its shock absorbers. The car decided at that moment that stalling would be a good idea.

George couldn’t have agreed less.

The beast roared again and rather than climbing on top of the car, stepped around to the side to get at George. It reached for the window and plowed through the glass with surprisingly little effort. Fragments of the broken window exploded into the interior and showered George, who was doing his very best to get out through the passenger’s side door at the same time.

He had just managed to open the door when the thing’s claws hooked into his foot and ankle. George yelped and kicked, trying to get free, trying to stop the pain that went running from his lower leg, when the door near his head was ripped completely away from the hinges.

There were snarling faces above him and below and George decided enough was enough. He cocked back his mauled foot and then drove the heel of his boot into the snout that was snapping at him. Something in the monster’s nose crunched and the beast pulled back, shaking its head violently from side to side.

The one near his head was reaching in to grab him and George returned the favor; even as the long, deadly fingers of the werewolf were grabbing at his clothes, the beast got close enough for him to drive his thumb into the left eye of the thing.

It tried to pull back, but George used his other hand to grab into the thick ruff of fur near its neck and forced his thumb deeper into the soft tissue, snarling himself.

He was as good as dead, so he decided to at least leave them knowing they’d been in a fight.

As the werewolf jumped back, George followed; his face in that moment was almost as feral as the ones on the wild things near him. The werewolf snarled and came for him, one eye closed against the furious tearing and, yes, the blood that was flowing from it. George drove his fist into its throat as hard as he could and was delighted to hear it let out a choking cough. He liked the effect so much, he did it again while the giant thing was hacking and trying to catch a decent breath.

The werewolf backed off, clutching at its throat and half growling, half whining. George moved forward again, determined to push his advantage over the unnatural monstrosity.

The weight that hit him from behind slammed him into the road with enough force to knock the wind out of him and to crack a couple of ribs. George grunted and tried to breathe again as the pressure increased.

“Get the fuck offa me!”

The one he’d struck in the throat fell to all fours in front of him and vomited a stream of blood. It looked at him with both eyes, one still red and swollen looking, and then loped forward until it was staring him in the face.

All the anger left his body even as he managed to draw in a decent breath. Out with the bad air, in with the fear. He’d hurt it, but the snarling thing staring into his eyes was far from out of the fight and another one was sitting on top of him, pinning him in place as it huffed warm breaths on the back of his neck.

As he lay there, waiting for the creature to kill him, the others came closer. Apparently they had finished their murderous appetizers and were now ready for the main course.

Mark Loman panted heavily in the deepening cold. The run wasn’t that long, only ten miles, but still he was exhausted and the arctic air was scouring his lungs with every gulp of oxygen he took in.

Not surprisingly he reflected back on the night he helped murder an innocent woman as he kept moving.

He’d thought Cullie was joking at first, and had said he’d take the head. It seemed like a good joke right up until the time Cullie started cutting.

He should have been disgusted. He should have knocked his friend on his ass and been done with it, but once the animal’s cries started, he found himself fascinated.

Mark had been a hunter since he was very young and he’d never once felt any regrets for his actions or pity for the creatures he killed. He’d been raised to believe that man was the ruler of the world by God’s decree; everything else was here for man’s use. His family had owned only a few pets, and in all cases they were servants as well. Hunting dogs. He’d never gotten close to any of the animals because his father had always believed that the dogs were tools, not toys.

So, no, there had never been any guilt, but he’d also always made it a point to make sure he had a clean kill. The animals were here for man to use, but not for man to misuse. None of God’s creatures were meant to suffer if it could be helped.

Until that night. Watching Cullie cut and abuse the animal hadn’t been as exciting as it had been fascinating. Okay, he was a little freaked out when he realized his friend was, well, getting into the torture a bit much, but Cullie had always been weird. That didn’t really mean much as long as he kept it to himself. He’d even decided to talk to Cullie about it later.

When George started puking his sad guts out, Mark turned to make sure he was all right. He only saw the transformation out of the corner of his eye, but seeing the mangled, wretched animal turn into a wounded woman threw him for a loop. Okay, to be honest, he’d freaked out. It was one thing to torture a dying animal, but something else entirely to hurt another human being. He screamed, and he staggered back, horrified by what he saw. He was just as horrified when he saw Cullie grab the — and here his mind tried to make the memory a lie and show him a wolf being maimed beyond all repair: he did not allow himself that luxury — woman’s bleeding arms and rip back with all of his strength. For one brief second it looked like Cullie was peeling away a shirt, and then the blood came, spilling from the bared muscles and tendons, the lacerated underlying layer of tissue that separated skin and the body beneath.

The woman (wolf, his mind insisted) had let loose a scream that still haunted him on nights when he went to bed sober. She’d sat up, for the love of God, and the sounds she made sent fever chills through Mark’s entire body. Her face was unmarred, and her wide blue eyes stood as far open as they could get as her mouth strained against the sounds escaping her.

For one heartbeat his entire world became terrifyingly clear. He heard the poor girl screaming, and under that he heard the sounds of Cullie grunting and whining in pleasure. In the distance, almost sublimated by those overwhelming noises, he heard George crying, sobbing into his own hands and then getting ill again.

He saw Cullie’s hands holding that flesh shirt, saw his friend keep pulling, separating the skin garment from the body it belonged to, and saw the way his friend trembled. He looked into the girl’s eyes, and all but felt the pain coming from her in waves.

Worst of all, he knew that Cullie meant to keep cutting and skinning until the girl died. He knew the kid he’d all but grown up with meant to make her suffer for as long as he could.

He moved forward and knocked Cullie aside even as he was reaching for his own hunting knife. He drove the blade in with all of his weight behind the strike and felt muscles part, hot blood wash his hands and finally, the sickening crunch of bones breaking from the force of the attack. Mark held his breath as he kept sawing at the open wound he’d made, using more strength than he actually knew he had to stop the scream still echoing through his mind. She kept screaming long after he’d removed her head. The sound slowly faded, but still seemed deafening even after they’d buried her body.

As for the burial itself, he barely remembered a damned thing except panicking. All he clearly recalled was digging and then George trying to get the rental car back on the road and running into a tree and finally, Cullie calling the other guys back to haul them out of the ditch.

Mark pushed the rest of it away. He was close to where he needed to be, and he wanted to concentrate.

He was pretty sure the landmark he was looking for was almost his. All he knew for sure was that it had a cross as a symbol. Maybe it was a church or maybe it was a tree, he had no idea for sure.

As he finished scrabbling up a steep slope of jagged stone he saw what he’d been questing for. It was a church; or rather it had been a church once. Now there was little to see save the burnt remains that sat under a sheath of ice from the growing storm. The wood was old and water-soaked, but even in the darkness he could make out the shape of fallen pews through the holes in the front of the building and the slightly bent cross that still perched on the roof. A narrow dirt trail stood in front of the place but it was overgrown now and obviously no longer in use.

He almost sobbed as he staggered forward, his body shaking with cold and exhaustion.

He did sob when he saw the golden mane of the werewolf. It stepped around the side of the building, looking directly at him and grinning. The thing towered over him, close to eight feet in height on its back legs, and moved closer with slow, predatory steps.

He almost pissed himself when it spoke. “She’d have lived if you hadn’t cut off her head.” The words were clear enough to understand, but only barely.

He looked at it for several seconds and it, in turn, waited for a response. “I have no excuse for you. I was wrong.”

Instead of speaking, it merely nodded.

“Will… Are my kids going to be okay?”

It nodded again.

“Then I guess let’s get this over with.”

The werewolf didn’t tear him apart. Instead it moved forward and struck him with a backhand that sent him sailing five feet backward.

“You’ve got a knife, Loman. Use it.”

Mark crawled back to his hands and knees and looked at it for a moment, surprised.

The thing came closer, dropping to all fours. “I said use it.”

He nodded and reached for the sheathed weapon. It waited patiently until he was up and standing, ready to defend himself, and then it charged, roaring a challenge.

Mark stepped to the side and swung the blade in a low, fast arc, hacking through fur and muscle across the creature’s back. It let out an almost human yelp and spun around, glaring hatred in his direction.

Before he could even think about how lucky he’d just gotten, the creature lashed with one forepaw and cut four trenches down his face. Mark fell to his knees from the pain and the force of the blow, the knife forgotten and all the fight taken from him.

“Pick up your knife and try again.” The voice was infuriating. “I wouldn’t want you thinking you didn’t get a fair shake out of this.”

He spoke as carefully as he could through the heavy lacerations on his mouth. “You’re going to kill me either way, right?”

“Oh, yes.” The monstrous face nodded, the blue eyes burned with the desire to rip him apart.

Mark reached down and grabbed the knife. He didn’t want to die; it was as simple as that. If he could at least incapacitate the thing, he might have a chance.

His face felt like it was on fire and the rain and snow that struck it only made matters worse, but his adrenaline levels were climbing now and the cold seemed to have left him. Mark shook the blood that threatened to spill into his eyes away and lowered himself closer to the ground, covering his most vulnerable areas as best he could.

He was a hunter, too, and he knew what the werewolf would try for. The same places he knew he would be trying for.

The werewolf moved, stalking closer. Mark faced it, his hands and knees shaking with adrenaline and exhaustion.

It was time now.

Man and wolf-man both charged, both growled as they met, and Mark ducked under the monster’s body and slammed the knife he carried into the heavily muscled stomach of the creature, not trying to hack in and pull out, but instead sinking the blade in deeply and then forcing the edge to run up from just above the creature’s navel all the way to the hard sternum. Thick hot fluids ran from the gaping wound and the werewolf let out a shriek of pain. The claws of the beast raked across his back, tearing through waterlogged clothes and grazing his ribs on both sides.

Mark let out a scream of his own and pulled the weapon free, stabbing again, this time into the heaving tender spot under the thing’s arm, slamming the blade through muscles and blood vessels and once again dragging the weapon as far as the bones would permit to open another long gash. The werewolf clubbed him with its elbow, trying to break free, but Mark knew better than to let it. He pulled the knife away and lowered his aim, cutting into the meat and organs just above the werewolf’s pelvis, trying to saw through as many vital organs as possible, to inflict as much pain as possible, anything he could do to stop the animal in its tracks.

The hind claw of the thing left the ground and caught his leg just below the knee, ripping flesh and clothing away in a downward stroke that took most of the meat from Mark’s shin in the process.

Mark screamed and kept stabbing, hoping he could stop this insanity, praying he would live through it.

The werewolf pushed away from him, thick trails of blood falling from every open wound he’d made.

Mark groaned, feeling the hot run of blood coursing over his face and over his leg. Aside from that unexpected heat, he felt almost nothing. Shock was surely setting in.

The beast stood still, panting heavily and looked at him. Its unsettlingly human eyes stared a little glassily. There was a part of Mark Loman that had always been a hunter and always would be. That primal aspect of his soul wanted to roar in victory. He kept staring back, and that predatory piece of him suddenly shivered.

The werewolf was standing back, not attacking, because it wanted him to understand what he faced. Its fingers parted the fur around the worst of the wounds he’d given it, displaying the massive gash that ran from chest down nearly to the groin. Mark stared, stunned as the flesh there began to heal.

He watched, too shocked to consider running or fighting, as the flesh and organs exposed by the deep cut pulled back together. Blood stopped flowing, and then the heart he’d nicked mended itself, the muscles bunched and twisted until they were once again whole and the skin practically zipped itself shut.

The other wounds mended as well, and the beast stared at him, the glazed look gone from the cold blue eyes.

“That was to let you know, to make you understand.” The voice seemed more human now, or maybe he was just adjusting. “She would have healed even from the skinning your friend gave her, Loman. She would have recovered given time.”

The thing stepped forward again, lowering its head until they were almost at the same height. Mark’s eyes looked at the same spot where he’d seen the wounds vanish. There wasn’t even a serious scar left to show that he’d almost killed the thing.

“Landers did the maiming, you son of a bitch. But you killed my baby girl.”

The werewolf hit him hard with a closed fist and Mark heard something inside of his chest break under the impact. After that he felt nothing at all.

Roland Weilland looked down at the unconscious wreck of a man and stared. The pain from his wounds was little more than a memory now, and he lifted his head to the sky and called out to his brethren. His voice clear and pure, echoed off the trees and hills and carried longer than most would have thought possible.

He looked at the still breathing man on the ground and shook his head. He knew this was the part where it would get tricky. Now it would not be his decision alone, but John’s as well.

The snow fell heavier now than it had before, and Roland sat, saving body heat while he waited.

Eventually they came to him. The rest of his pack moved with the sort of grace that all of their kind had, and all of them carried their burdens.

Two dead police officers — both of whom Roland knew, and a faceless woman were included in the bodies brought along. John came forward carrying Cullie Lander’s skinned body and wearing the flesh he’d peeled away as if it were a cloak.

All three of the men they’d hunted were still alive, though none of them would be for much longer and the odds were good that if they’d been conscious they would have been begging for death’s release.

“It is the time of judgment. What say you about the offenders?” His voice was calm and solemn.

John would decide their fates as his wife was the one they had killed.

John called to hear how each had fought and listened to the stories told.

He listened well, and as the storm raged around them he thought over the options and made his decisions.

The diner had attracted a new crowd of customers and Scott watched them all as they came past, wondering if any of them might be shape changers, or how they would react if their entire world were thrown into chaos.

“If I don’t get to see Allison soon, I swear I’ll go crazy.”

Eric simply nodded, his back ramrod straight and his eyebrows drawn together. Scott remembered the same expression from when his friend was still in high school, but that was before he’d gone into the military and become a walking brick wall. Of all the people he kept in touch with from back then, Eric was the most changed and, ironically the most the same. He was different in appearance and in the way he carried himself, but he was still, deep inside, a decent human being. That was really what bothered him the most about the situation they were in. The others had pulled the wool over his eyes and he’d let them. He hadn’t wanted to know that they had changed and so he’d let himself be blinded.

But looking back over the last decade, he could see where the signs were all there. George had been the original Angry Young Man, and somehow he’d gotten past that and become a wimp. Cullie had gone from being a loud and obnoxious creep to being just a creep. Only, really, he’d probably just learned to keep his opinions to himself instead of advertising. He couldn’t for the life of him remember why they hung around with Cullie back then or why they’d continued doing so after high school. And Mark? Well, Mark didn’t seem to have changed, not on the surface, but he could still remember a few times when Cullie and Mark had cornered one kid or another for a little fun and games. They’d never beaten the crap out of the underclassmen; they’d just tormented them enough to make the younger students leery of getting too close.

Eric looked at him and shook his head. “I think if I get out of this with Sarah and the boys, that’ll be enough to make me happy.”

Scott nodded.

“And if anything has happened to them, I’ll be coming back around here and taking care of business.” Scott didn’t need to ask for clarification, he knew exactly what Eric meant and he felt the same way.

Scott’s stomach twisted and roiled inside his body at the thought of what Allison was going through and what condition the baby was in.

“I’m trying hard to understand all of this, Scott. You know what I mean?”

Scott nodded. “Oh yeah. You better believe it.” He took a sip of his coffee and leaned back in his seat. “I never would have thought in a million years that we’d ever be sitting here and having a discussion like this one, you know?”

Before Eric could answer him the door leading into the diner opened and the six men who had sat with them earlier re-entered the place. All of the men looked solemn, as well they should.

Neither Eric nor Scott stood, but at least in Scott’s case it took effort to remain relatively calm. The men walked over to the booth where they were sitting and stood looking down at them.

Eric was the one who spoke first. “Have you finished your vendetta?”

“We’re done.” It was the big man who spoke. “The weather’s a bitch out there, but I’m guessing you gentlemen would like to be with your families.”

Eric nodded and stood and Scott followed his lead.

A few moments later they were all outside and the truth of the Viking’s words was made painfully clear. Scott had barely bothered to look out the window; he’d been too busy worrying about Allison. While they’d been waiting, a full inch or more of new snow had accumulated and the temperature had dropped by what felt like at least ten degrees.

The leader looked at the two of them for a moment and then spoke calmly. “We’re going to blindfold you gentlemen, and then we’re going to take you to see your wives and children. The house where they’re staying isn’t far away and this won’t take long.”

Neither of them resisted as they had their eyes covered and were led into an oversized van. The men who handled them were gentle, and spoke only as much as was required to let them know what they had to do.

Scott closed his eyes behind the blindfold and prayed as hard as he ever had. His fears about Allison and the baby grew worse instead of better.

Eric was quiet beside him, but the tension coming off of him was palpable. Neither of them spoke until the vehicle finally stopped.

When they were led from the car and their blindfolds were removed, they looked around in the blustering veil of snow and saw only one house, a large affair with three stories and a fireplace that was burning. They also saw the for sale sign in the front yard, though it was half buried under snow.

The men led them to the door, and knocked softly. A moment later the door was opened by another stranger, who looked around and then nodded his head and let them pass.

Eric smiled for the first time since he’d shown up, just as soon as he saw Sarah and his twin sons. Lance and Tyler looked up from the Disney movie they were watching in the model home, and let out squeals of joy even as they rose from in front of the 32-inch television. Twin bullets of flesh launched themselves at their father and he caught them silently, pulling them up to the level of his face, one on each arm, and hugging them. It was practically a miracle he didn’t crush his sons from enthusiasm alone.

Sarah stood and looked at him for several seconds, shocked to see him. Sarah was not what Scott had ever expected when it came to his high school chum. She had short brown hair and a body that hadn’t quite sprung back from giving birth to the twins. Scott would have expected his friend to marry a cheerleader type, because they were all he ever fell for when they were both younger. Instead Eric had married a woman who was moderately attractive and almost as tall as he was. She also had a brain and was at least as opinionated on every subject as her husband.

If her sons were energetic in their reunion with their father, she was more reserved, but no less happy to see him. She walked calmly to where he was and stared into his eyes like he was the most important thing in the world. Aside from the children they shared, Scott had to guess that was the absolute truth of the matter.

He was happy for Eric. He was happy for his friend’s family. He wished every joy and good moment for his friend that the world could provide. He also wanted to see his wife.

While Eric was hugging his family and listening to the three most wonderful voices that could exist in his world, Scott looked around to see if Allison was in the room and saw only the Spartan furnishings and a total of ten strangers standing around.

“Where’s Allison?” He spoke, but the words didn’t travel far. He couldn’t seem to catch enough breath for that.

The Viking came over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Allison is fine, Mr Lassiter.” His voice was soft, pleasant now that the growl had left it. “But there were complications.”

Roland walked slightly ahead of the younger man, his grief almost enough to overwhelm him.

Scott Lassiter was an innocent in all of this, and his wife, Allison was even more of an innocent. He didn’t know them and didn’t need to know them to feel bad for their involvement in his personal war.

They moved to the back of the house, with Lassiter almost whining in the back of his throat. The man was worried, terrified of what might have gone wrong.

Three of the women who’d been left to watch over their guests were in the master bedroom with Allison, tending to her needs as they entered the room.

The woman lay on her back, sweating, and crying softly as the labor pains continued.

Scott Lassiter shoved past him and moved to his wife’s side, dropping to his knees at the sight of her. The baby was coming now and there was nothing that could be done to stop what had been started. He hoped for the sake of the couple now reunited that the birth would bring a healthy child, but he had his doubts.

He was still well connected with the local people and he’d made a phone call already to get an ambulance to them, but the storm was growing worse and there were so many accidents on the road that he worried more than he would have expected.

Lassiter looked at him for a moment and then turned back to his wife.

Allison Lassiter bit her lip and moaned as she arched her back; another contraction and this one was apparently worse than most of the others.

“I’ve called for an ambulance, Mr Lassiter. I have to be honest, the chances aren’t very good for one getting here any time soon.”

Lassiter looked at him again, this time his anger showing clearly through the confusion and worry. The man stood and walked away from his wife, bristling with the need to do something about her situation and his own growing fury.

“She shouldn’t be here, mister. She should be at home, or in a hospital.”

“I agree.” He shook his head. “I am truly sorry for this, Mr Lassiter. I can’t apologize enough.”

“No, you can’t.” He moved closer, looking up into Roland’s eyes. “There’s no way you can apologize enough. Especially if my wife or my child dies because of this.”

That hurt. That hurt a lot. He wasn’t much of one to feel guilt very often, but the situation was entirely his fault. If he’d gotten the facts from Loman instead of getting dramatic, he could have spared them all a great deal of trouble. Instead, he’d dragged the woman in the bed and the man in front of him into this nonsense.

Lassiter jammed a finger into his chest with enough force to actually sting. “What makes you any better than my friends if they die? Tell me that.”

Roland leaned down, his teeth bared, his nostrils flaring and his blood pressure rising. “I’m trying to make amends for my actions, Lassiter. They never did.”

“How can you make amends for this, you son of a bitch?” It wasn’t often that anyone, man or wolf man, stood up to him.

Roland looked around the room and then walked over to the window. The snow was falling harder than ever and didn’t look like it intended to stop in the next few hours.

He looked to Susan, his wife and one of the women attending to Lassiter’s wife and she looked back, communicating that the chances for the baby were not good without a medical team.

Roland nodded his understanding and began taking off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” Lassiter was looking at him like he’d lost his mind somewhere along the way.

“I’m going to keep your wife and son safe, Mr Lassiter.”

The transformation was as painful as ever, but he stifled the urge to howl. Lassiter, who’d only seen John earlier in the diner, had apparently forgotten exactly what he was dealing with. The change left him stunned for a moment.

Roland stepped past him and moved to the bed. Allison Lassiter stared at him in complete horror, and he leaned in closer. “I’m going to take you to the hospital,” He spoke as clearly as he could, moving his lips in ways that felt completely wrong when he was in his hybrid state. “Do not panic and do not struggle. I will not hurt you.”

She stared at him for several seconds. They’d met and spoken a few times and while she’d been upset with being taken, she had never been stupid about it. Finally she nodded her head and waited.

Lassiter moved to intercept and both Susan and her sister Laura blocked him.

Without another word — there were several coming from Scott Lassiter — Roland picked the woman up and carried her from the room. The hallway and living room were full of his brethren, and he made his intentions known. John came with him and called for another member of the pack to join them. John changed without bothering to strip down. This wasn’t a time for decorum and it wasn’t a time to worry about a pair of jeans. The other started disrobing and changed his mind when he saw John split out of his skin and then impatiently tear away the remains of his old flesh and his wardrobe.

The woman in his arms cried out in pain again and Roland left the building, starting to run the second he was outside.

The hospital was only a few miles away if they chose to take the roads. Roland cut through the back yard of the house and started through the woods, already knowing better ways to handle the obstacles nature put before them.

Eric set his sons down and hugged Sarah to him, incapable of speaking for several moments. Through all of his time in the Middle East, through every combat situation he’d gone into and survived, the main reason he longed to come back home was now in front of him. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was invincible. He never once went into a combat situation with delusions of being a hero and saving the world. He went in thinking about his wife, his sons and their lives together.

When he thought they might be dead, a part of his mind shut down like a child holding his breath to get what he wants.

For the first time in a week, he could feel his mind breathe.

“Did they hurt you?” He asked the question because he had to. Sarah looked fine and so did the children, but he had to know. Looks could be deceiving, after all.

“No. They just… took us. They haven’t been anything but kind aside from keeping us here.” She looked into his eyes and tried to read whatever he might have stored behind them. “Eric, what’s going on here?”

“It’s a mistake. They thought Scott and me were involved in something. They wanted to make sure we showed up, so they took you and the boys and they took his wife.”

“Eric, I don’t think she’s doing well. She’s back there trying to have a baby and I don’t think she’s ready. From what she told me, she’s not due for another couple of months.”

Before Eric could answer, one of the werewolves came through the door from the back room, carrying Allison. Eric knew her, of course, had known her since high school for Christ’s sake and seeing her held in the arms of a monster was enough to jolt him.

“What the hell?” He started moving forward and two of the men in the room shook their heads at him. Another two stopped and did their non-verbal communication thing with the beast carrying Allison and then almost immediately began changing.

Sarah turned without a word and distracted both of the boys, hugging them and talking to them as she maneuvered them away from being able to see what was occurring.

The two that had spoken with their leader walked toward the front door and began changing as they moved. By the time they were out the door and moving into the storm they’d left piles of dead skin and clothing in their wakes.

Scott came out of the back of the house, his face tense with worry, ready to storm after them if he had to.

It was Eric who intercepted him and pulled him to the side. He asked what was up and Scott explained.

“Look, there’s nothing you can do right now, Scott. If they wanted to hurt her they would have by now.” He kept his voice as calm and level as he could, and low enough that the boys wouldn’t hear what he was saying.

“I know that,” Scott hissed. “But I mean it, Eric. If they let her die or our baby die, I’ll come back for them.”

Eric said nothing. He was already trying to figure out how they were going to really get out of all of this alive.

He wanted to believe the monsters around them would keep their word about setting them free, but he had his doubts. He hadn’t seen Mark’s kids or the woman George was now living with. That left him worried. Very worried.

He looked to Sarah and his sons and tried to remain calm. There was nothing he could do about their current situation except be grateful that his family was alive and unharmed.

His number-one priority was making sure they stayed that way.

What had started as freezing rain and moved into snow had now become a blizzard. The thick layer of white that dropped from the sky blanketed damned near everything.

George woke up in the middle of the woods, sheltered by the remains of what looked like a church. He hadn’t really thought he’d wake up at all, so it was a night for surprises.

The cold sucked at his vitality, leeched away his will to do anything but sit and shiver. Outside of his shelter he heard the wind screaming through the trees. Not far away in the darkness of the abandoned building, he could hear someone moaning.

That was what got him to move. He recognized the sound of Cullie’s voice.

He tried to stand and heard himself moan at the pain it caused. There wasn’t a part of him that didn’t feel like it had been beaten hard and kicked a few times for extra measure. Still, he had to see what was going on with Cullie.

He moved toward the dark lump on the ground a few feet away and tried to see clearly in the darkness brought on by the storm. The thing sounded like Cullie, made noises that should have come from his friend, but it wasn’t Cullie. It couldn’t be. Cullie had skin.

His hands and feet still wore flesh, as did his face. The rest of his body had been stripped raw, and even in the darkness he could see things that simply were not meant to be seen.

“Oh fuck, what did they do to you?” He blinked back the tears that wanted to fall, refusing to shed a tear for his old friend. He knew what had happened. He knew why it had happened.

Cullie looked at him with wild eyes, but he didn’t think the man was really seeing him anymore. Despite the bitter chill in the air, the skinned man in front of him gave off heat. He was feverish.

He let out a small yelp of surprise when he heard Mark’s voice. “I don’t think he can talk. He’s too far gone with whatever else they did to him.”

George turned around and looked for Mark. It took him a moment to spot his friend. Mark was alive, his wrists and ankles bound in what was left of his own bootlaces. His face had been sliced into fifths, and the red wounds that separated the portions were starting to scab over.

“What the hell happened?”

“The big one, their leader, beat me in a fight. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. I don’t know why.” Mark coughed. “Maybe he wants us to freeze to death so it looks like an accident.”

“If anyone ever finds us out here, I don’t think they’ll make that mistake.”

Cullie moaned again and fell into a coughing fit. George looked his way and then started untying Mark. There was no way in hell he could offer comfort to a man whose entire body was basically one raw nerve ending. He imagined that any place he touched would just add to his already considerable pain.

Mark waited patiently while he finished untying him and then started rubbing his wrists, trying to get blood back into hands that looked almost blue even in the darkness.

While Mark worked on untying his ankles, George dug into his waterproof coat and prayed that the zipper had kept his meager supplies dry. He found the map and, yes, his lighter.

The lighter worked just fine and even the meager light it offered was enough to let him see that something was written on the map. Mark watched him while he read the message. “’Justice is served. You are free to go.’”

“Free to go my ass! There’s nowhere to go!” Mark was pissed off. George was still unsettlingly happy to be alive.

“We’ve got the map. We can find our way back.” He was trying to be reasonable. It wasn’t working as well as he would have liked.

“What about Cullie? What about Ellen and Lou? Hell, what about your fucking girlfriend, George?”

He clenched his jaw. “Her name is Cheryl. When we get out of here we’ll figure it all out.”

Mark was shaking with cold, his clothes half frozen to his body and his feet stripped of everything but a ratty looking pair of socks.

“I don’t have the answers, Mark. I’m still trying to figure all of this out!” George felt his temper rising and decided not to stop it. He’d had all he could take of Mark and Cullie browbeating him. Jesus! He’d been in a fight with werewolves earlier in the night and now he just wanted to celebrate being alive for five minutes without Mark riding his ass.

He looked at his watch and was shocked to see it was only a little after eleven PM.

“Okay, if we’re going to live through this shit, we need a fire.”

Mark looked his way and then gestured. “There’s a dozen broken pews around here. Let’s gather some up.” He limped toward them and George saw the ugly wounds on his leg.

George killed the flame from the lighter and started gathering wood; mostly small pieces at first, kindling for the larger boards.

Ten minutes later they had a fire and light and warmth enough to give him a hope of not freezing to death. He also had a dead lighter. The Bic wasn’t meant to last forever and it gave up the ghost by the time they’d managed to get the blaze going.

“We’ll wait out the storm. When it’s all over with, we’ll try to find our way to somewhere. I saw a road earlier.” He shut his mouth, remembering the cops and the lady he’d seen on that road and how his actions had lead to them being slaughtered. He sighed and told Mark what he could remember. “Maybe there will still be cars there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a chance to get out of this.”

“What about Cullie?” Mark looked over at their friend, who was still shivering violently, his face turned away from the heat.

“What about him?”

“We have to get him help. He’s dying.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do for him, Mark. He’s lost—“ he bit back the nervous voice in his head that started screaming about lost flesh— “he’s lost a lot of blood. Even if we get him out of here, he doesn’t even have a coat. He’ll freeze to death out there.”

“This is insane.”

George looked at him for a long time without speaking, as his body started warming up. “Yeah, it is. This is fucked up beyond all repair.”

“Why didn’t they just kill us?”

“I don’t know.” That was the end of their conversations for a while. They sat in uncomfortable silence that was broken only by Cullie’s fevered moans and the winds that pushed through the openings and tried to steal what little heat they managed to capture.

The Hillside Township Emergency Center welcomed the men, despite their nudity. If a few people looked concerned or amused, they pushed those thoughts aside as Roland handed over Allison Lassiter.

He didn’t wait around to talk to anyone, but turned around and headed back into the blizzard. There were still things that had to be taken care of, still dangers left for him and his to deal with.

They had only run a portion of the distance back to the house when John veered away from them and toward the woods where they had left the men.

Whatever he did, it was John’s decision to make.

They’d discussed that earlier.

Roland had made his proclamation and John had given a great deal of thought to what to do. Both Loman and Heatherly had fought well and done all they could to survive. As Landers had handled the worst of the crimes, John decided to let them have another chance at living. In the end, he’d left them at the church.

“I told Landers if he lived through it, I would let him go.” He said the words softly.

“What do you think his chances are?”

“I bit him and let him live.”

“Will you keep your word to the man who killed your wife?” Dave had been the one to speak up. Dave, who was loyal to a fault and always willing to state his opinion; He also happened to be the police chief these days.

“I don’t know,” John had answered truthfully. “It might be dangerous to let one like that become one of our kind.”

Roland laughed when he heard those words. “Might be? It is dangerous. Don’t be foolish.”

“You said it was my call, Roland!” He wasn’t quite challenging, but he was getting closer to it.

“It is your choice.” Roland had leaned in closer and snarled, and John had wisely backed down. “But your promise to let him live doesn’t mean we let him into our community or stand by if he goes too far.”

Now Roland was heading back to deal with Lassiter and Fulford. That was his place. John would have to handle whatever happened in the woods. That was his place.

Everything would work out. He promised himself that much. Everything would work out because it had to work out.

They moved through the storm, he and his two remaining companions, ready to deal with the issues that remained.

Eric wanted to leave, and had intentions of doing so as soon as it was possible, but first he had to deal with Scott, who was practically wearing a hole in the carpeting.

It was one of the women in the room who came up to them next. She was attractive, with dark hair shot through with gray, and could have been anywhere between her late twenties into her forties. She had a weathered look to her skin, but had not developed any of the physical signs that he associated with middle age.

There was nothing demure or shy about her attitude. She stepped forward and looked directly at Scott. “You want to go to your woman?”

Scott couldn’t have said, “yes” faster if his life depended on it.

Without a single word beyond that, she did exactly as the men had done and began taking off the majority of her clothes. Unlike the men, however, she grabbed a bag and shoved her skirt and blouse into it.

One of the remaining strangers, a man, stepped toward her and whispered something softly into her ear. The expression on his face made it clear he wasn’t trying to get romantic.

Her body was in nearly perfect shape. Her breasts were full, but gravity had taken its toll on them. Aside from this one admission to age, the rest of her figure belonged to an athlete. She nodded her head at the man’s comment and handed him the bag to hold for a moment. Then she changed with the same violent abruptness as the males of her kind, literally ripping out of her skin to reveal a dark gray form covered in thick fur.

Eric looked her over, too shocked to speak for the moment. Her height was close to seven feet; her body was still hard muscle, her breasts were still there, though buried in the thick fur that trailed down her belly to join with growth of fur near her pubic region.

Without preamble she grabbed her sack of clothing and then draped it around her neck. “Come with me, Mr Lassiter. We’ll find her.”

Scott stared at her for a moment, just as shocked as Eric, and then headed for the door. She shook her head and dropped to all fours behind him, then brushed past him in the hallway. Three times she blocked his path and three times he tried to move around her before the man who had spoken to her explained.

“The storm is worse now than it was a while ago. The roads are impassable. If you want to see your wife, you’ll have to ride her like a horse or you aren’t going anywhere.” He spoke calmly enough, but had an amused expression on his face.

Scott shook his head and after a moment of wondering how he was supposed to handle the change in plans, slung a leg over the monster’s waist and then leaned forward until his arms were around her neck. If carrying a 180-pound man caused the creature any difficulty, she hid it well. A moment after that they were out the door and lost in the flurry of white that fell from the skies.

Eric shook his head, still trying to convince himself that every thing going on around him was real.

Sarah brought him back to reality when she came over to put her head on his shoulder. He looked back the way she had come and saw his boys had fallen asleep.

And exhaustion reared its head and reminded him that he’d been riding on caffeine for the last two days. All of his worries about his friends paled next to the siren call of sleep.

Eric and Sarah moved over to the couch near where the boys were sleeping, and his wife, already as close to a perfect person as he had ever met, slid the cushions aside to reveal a fold out bed.

The strangers in the house with them saw what was going on and moved away, leaving them in peace.

After they were both in the bed Eric looked at Sarah and smiled. “We’re almost out of here, Sarah. We’re going home soon.”

“I hope you’re right. I miss that stupid house.”

In response he pulled her closer and rested his head so that their faces touched. He was asleep in minutes. His dreams were all nightmares, but he didn’t remember a one of them when he woke the next morning.

They did their best to sleep, still shivering whenever a breeze pushed through the broken down walls of the church and slithered to their corner where the fire crackled and glowed.

Mark had more trouble with the idea than George, who was now curled up and snoring softly to himself. Cullie continued to hang on, whimpering occasionally and from time to time trying to turn over in his fevered rest. Mark couldn’t understand how the man could do anything at all except scream in pain.

He drifted for a while, not quite asleep and not fully aware either. He might have actually been taken by dreams if it hadn’t been for Cullie’s sudden screams.

Mark sat up, blinking sleep from his eyes, and looked over at the pew where Cullie had been resting in relative peace. Cullie was still there, but hardly resting. The man’s body was contorted, and his mouth was wide open as he gulped in air and started yelling again. With no idea what was going on, Mark stood and rushed to his friend’s side.

And stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the bones in Cullie’s body stretching. It wasn’t one to two random bones, but damned near all of them at the same time. Cullie’s hands and feet pounded at the pew, beating a furious tattoo. His eyes were rolled back into his head and showed only whites. His chest was expanding in a series of uneven twists that looked painful and had to feel even worse.

Mark had been unfortunate enough to suffer from several growth spurts in high school. He remembered them well because they hurt almost constantly. He’d been taken to three different doctors when he complained of pain in his legs before his parents accepted that the aches and pains he felt were nothing but the usual discomfort associated with growing bones. He was just sensitive enough to feel it more than a lot of others because his growth spurts were always extreme.

Whatever he’d felt couldn’t hold a candle to what Cullie was going through. Mark could see the bones in his rib cage changing, growing and stretching in ways that must surely feel like the Holy Inquisition had chosen him for a year’s worth of confessions.

“Cullie?”

Cullie groaned, the sound coming from deep inside his chest and accompanied by the sound of bones creaking, flesh stretching. It was when Cullie opened his mouth again that reality sank through the numb surprise. Cullie’d grown fangs, and it looked like his face was starting to change shape.

“Oh, fuck me, Freddie.” Mark stumbled backward; shaking his head in denial of what he knew was happening. Cullie was his friend, true enough, but his mind looked past the ruined form in front of him and pushed images of what he’d done to the girl that had been a wolf on the that dreadful night. More importantly, his memories insisted on reminding him that his friend had orgasmed when he’d torn the flesh from the screaming wolf-woman. He’d moaned deep in his chest and messed his pants at the thought of what he’d done.

Mark kept thinking about that, too, as Cullie kept changing. This wasn’t the seamless, sudden transformation of the other werewolf he’d seen change. No, this was a slow and almost random thing. Cullie’s body was trying to recover from heavy trauma at the same time, and the changes seemed less organic than with the others. Maybe his body had to get used to the idea of becoming something inhuman before things went smoothly.

And all Mark could think about was the physical pleasure Cullie’d received when he tortured the pregnant woman. He kept going back to that no matter how much he didn’t want to think about it. Because, really, he was starting to realize why he’d been left here with George and with what should have been their dead mutual friend but was instead their changing mutual friend.

“George. George?” Mark almost stepped into the fire as he kept backing up and finally tore his eyes away from Cullie’s agonized transformation. Sweet Jesus, he’s growing skin again. He’s healing and when he’s done, what’s to stop him from getting off that fucking pew and tearing us both apart? He knew the answer of course. Not a damned thing would stop Cullie. If he got good at the whole shape changer thing, he’d be nearly unstoppable, and he’d start killing whenever the mood struck him. Cullie, who’d always been a little weird, always been the one to talk about what he’d like to do to this girl that made him hot or that guy that pissed him off, Cullie who’d blown a fucking wad while he had torn the skin from a pregnant woman, would heal faster than ever, be stronger than ever, and never leave a single bit of evidence that proved a human being had been involved in a murder.

Werewolf? Fuck that! Can you say serial killer with claws?

“George! Wake the fuck up!” His voice cracked as he screamed and George finally came out of his slumber, waking instantly.

Mark didn’t try to explain, he just pointed a finger. He saw the same realizations going through George’s mind that had gone through his and when he thought the troubles had cemented themselves, he asked, “What are we going to do here, George?”

George stared at Cullie for all of ten seconds, and then stepped toward the still growing beast on the pew and grabbed the closest limb, in this case the left foot, which had started sprouting fur.

George was not a small man. He was out of shape, but he was also big enough to make most people think twice about screwing with him. Mark stared with his mouth hanging open as George put his weight into it and practically hurled Cullie onto the fire.

Flames leaped and danced around Cullie as he hit the blazing collection of wood, and Cullie did more than scream now. He rose from the burning flames and roared, as the changes in his body accelerated.

Mark swallowed hard and shook his head, refusing to believe what his world had come to. The damned thing kept changing even as it burned, growing larger and more ferocious. The sounds coming from it were undiluted rage and pain and loud enough to leave him half deafened.

George didn’t stand by and wait for Cullie to die. He grabbed a board from near the fire and swung it as hard as he could, landing a savage blow across the side of its still burning head. The board shattered, and so did the back of Cullie’s misshapen skull. Cullie fell back into the flames, screeching as his hands were buried in the coals, and the flames licked across raw parts of his body that had not yet re-grown flesh.

George was screaming now, too, as he took the remaining length of wood and drove the edge into the monster’s back, pushing as hard as he could, ignoring the flames that threatened to ignite his clothing. The edge of the broken board was jagged and disappeared at least a couple of inches into the raw meat on the Cullie-thing’s back.

Cullie fell into the fire completely, his face buried in the ashes at the center of the blaze, and still George held him down, pushing with trembling arms. The sounds the half formed werewolf made would haunt Mark for the rest of his life; he knew they would.

Cullie pushed and fought back, but despite his changes, he was still too damaged to hold his own. One hand slid out of the pyre, scattering coals across the ground, and trying to reach George, but he was quick enough to step aside. Mark watched the fingers lengthening, watched the nails grow thicker, even as the heat started cooking the meat away from the bones.

George’s boots were smoldering, the laces on one of them already burning before he stepped back and left the board behind, sticking out of the spot where it had pushed through the muscles and possibly even through a couple of ribs.

George stared at Cullie and panted, his face smudged with ashes and seared to a light pink. He stomped his feet impatiently before he finally managed to put out the flames licking at his laces.

“You killed Cullie.” Mark shook his head, numbed to the point where he didn’t stop himself from opening his mouth.

George turned sharply on one heel and pivoted a scorched fist into his face, splitting his lip and snapping his head backwards with the force of the blow. Before Mark could recover, George bulldozed forward and hit him again, a third time and a fourth.

Mark fell back and crashed into the broken pews, once again completely unsettled by the events around him. He ignored the edge of wood that pressed into his back as he saw George stumbling around like a drunk.

Finally George settled himself against the far wall and drew into a nearly fetal position. Mark watched as the man he thought he’d known well enough to call a brother started crying, his head resting against his drawn up knees.

He had no anger left in him. There was nothing but a hollowed-out feeling and the pain of the scrapes that George’s fists had reopened. Mark eventually rose and limped to the closest opening in the side of the church before he dry retched a few times. The smell of cooking meat was overpowering inside the building. Even though the air outside was cold, it was purer, sweeter than the stench inside.

They did not speak as they walked through the deep snow. They merely kept moving. Mark’s feet were wrapped in the inner lining from his jacket to keep his feet warmer. Even that wouldn’t have happened if George hadn’t done it for him.

Mark was physically there, but nobody was home. That was just as well, because if he’d said the wrong thing, George might have killed him.

George didn’t much care about anyone or anything anymore; he couldn’t afford that luxury. He wanted to get out of this alive and he wanted to get back to his house and the world he’d left behind.

The blizzard had blown itself out during the long night, but not before dumping close to two feet of snow over the entire area. The map was almost useless, but after close to an hour he’d managed to find the stream again and begun moving in the opposite direction, using the runoff as his marker. A little after noon he found the bridge where everything had gone down the night before. There was no sign of a police car, or of the vehicle that had pushed partially through the guard railing.

It was close to four in the afternoon before they made it back to the place where they’d initially been dropped off. George saw the SUV idling at the edge of the snow covered road and openly sobbed.

The vehicle was running, and he increased his pace, stumbling several times but never quite falling. He made it to the curb next to the Ford and stared at the driver for several seconds, almost afraid to believe his eyes.

Eric Fulford looked so beautiful in that moment that he would have gleefully kissed him. It was only Eric who stepped out of the idling vehicle. Scott was not with him, and neither were any of his family members. He stood ramrod straight and did nothing to help either of them as they came forward. But when they were close, his hard features softened and he hugged George briefly before moving to help Mark into the back seat.

The road conditions were still hellish; though it was obvious the area had been plowed.

“Where are we going?”

“Local hospital.” Eric kept his eyes on the road, and they crawled slowly through the frozen wasteland. “Scott’s already there. Allison is in labor, or she was the last time I checked in.”

“Is your… Are Sarah and the boys all right?”

“Yeah.” Eric slowed down to a standstill and looked at George for several seconds. “I don’t know about Cheryl or Mark’s little ones. I haven’t seen them yet.”

“How did you know where to find us?”

“You had a visitor last night. John.” Eric’s face turned to stone again, a sure sign that he was trying not to let his anger get the best of him. Long before he’d signed up for the military Eric Fulford had been the sort to bottle up his negative feelings.

“John…” George knew what Eric was thinking. He didn’t have to say the man whose wife you let get murdered, for George to know that was what he was holding inside.

“Way I understand it, he’s the one that decided you got to live. He went back to where you were last night and watched over all of you. He told me what happened with Cullie.”

George tried to catch his breath, but it didn’t seem possible. Even thinking of the nightmare from earlier was enough to put a crushing pressure on his rib cage.

“I can’t talk about that.” George barely recognized his own voice.

“Fair enough.” He accelerated, but carefully. Eric was always a careful man. He seldom let his emotions get the better of him. George had always admired that about him.

They rode in silence the rest of the way.

Roland padded across the snow and watched the SUV as it moved. John was beside him the entire time, moving just as quietly. They made it to their stashed clothes long before the men in the vehicle had parked and sought help for Mark Loman.

Susan was still in the waiting room. He smiled for her and she returned the smile before standing up and coming into his arms. It had been a bad night and though she’d been worried about him being angry for taking Lassiter to this place, he was fine with it. She’d saved him the extra trip.

It wasn’t long before Eric Fulford joined them in the room. He sat by himself and waited to hear about the birth of Lassiter’s child. They all waited, though they had different reasons for wanting to know what happened.

Scott Lassiter came next, his pale face showing the strain of waiting. Allison Lassiter was fine. He shared that information with Fulford moments after he entered the room. Roland and his people sat at the far end of the waiting area and said nothing.

The baby might live. The baby might die. That was the way of things.

Fulford and Lassiter left the room after a few moments and were gone for close to half an hour. George Heatherly came in and sat down, holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his trembling hands. He didn’t look at them even once.

“They’ll ask, you know.” It was John who spoke, his voice soft and careful. This was, of course, the dangerous time. Whatever Roland said would be accepted, but the decision could well break apart his authority within the group.

Roland looked at his wife and then at his son-in-law and nodded. “If they ask, I’ll say yes.”

He was rather surprised when both nodded their approval.

It was Fulford who actually asked. Lassiter was still too stressed, apparently and didn’t trust himself not to lose his temper.

The man came up and asked to speak to Roland in the hallway. Roland nodded and instead of stopping there, walked outside into the cold.

Lassiter and Fulford both stood with him, but it was Fulford who finally posed the question. “Your kind heals quickly?”

“Yes.”

He spoke to the captain, but looked at the father-to-be.

“Scott’s son is very small, and very weak. His chances aren’t so good.” Roland simply nodded and waited again. “Is there anything that can be done to save him? By you and your people, I mean?”

He stared levelly at Scott Lassiter as he spoke. “We heal well. We tend to our own. Are you asking if he could be changed?”

“Well, yes.” Lassiter looked at the ground, probably afraid of what the answer might be.

Roland’s hand was gentle when he caught Lassiter’s chin and made him look into his eyes. “I can arrange for him to become like us. If he does, there will be a brief fever and then he will either live through it or he will die. If you are asking me to do this, I’ll do it. But you need to know the risks. What we become, what you have seen, is not a normal state for us. Unless he is trained, he’ll change at random times and become a very real danger to anyone around him. Those without the proper training… well, they are the things you hear about in legends.”

Lassiter nodded.

“Listen carefully to me Scott Lassiter. If I do this, he will have to stay here. You and your wife will have to stay here. You will be among friends, and you will be protected, but if you want your boy to have a normal life, it means staying with us and once you join, there is no way to quit.”

Lassiter looked to Fulford, who in turn could do nothing but shrug.

Roland finished. “Speak with your wife. Explain the risks. When you’ve made your decision, you can come back to me and let me know. I’ll either be here, or in the waiting room. I owe you at least that much.”

Lassiter nodded again and went inside to find his wife and the courage to explain what he planned.

Fulford looked up at Roland. “So that’s it?”

“Of course. You are free to go. You have been ever since I found out who killed my daughter.”

“Why didn’t you kill all of them?”

“That wasn’t my decision to make.” He looked the captain in the face, without any hesitation. “If it had been my choice, they’d all be dead now. John is the one who showed them compassion.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll tell about you? That I’ll tell my superiors in the military?”

“I can’t stop you, Captain. I think it would be a mistake on your part, but I certainly can’t stop you.”

“You could kill me.”

“I could. I won’t.”

The man was trying to stay calm, but Roland could smell his anger, his confusion. “I don’t understand you.”

“No, but I understand you, Captain. I know your type, as it were. We’re a lot alike.”

“How do you figure?”

“When you’re out in the field, you do what you are told, you follow your orders and you accept what your conscience will allow you to accept. You live by the rules of the military organization and you fight for what you believe is right. And I’d lay odds that if one of your men is killed in combat you go through all of the proper paperwork and you handle the phone calls to the soldier’s family yourself. Am I right?”

Fulford nodded.

“I do the same thing with my people. I care for them, I give them their orders and I handle whatever crisis comes my way.” He paced, restless again. His kind was always restless. “Here’s the thing you need to know, Captain Fulford. Even if you told your military superiors that you had the perfect recipe for soldiers that couldn’t be stopped, even if you told them and they believed you, it would never work.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you think I’ve done some checking? Would you go into a new combat zone without at least looking at a map? There’s nothing to differentiate us from perfectly normal human beings. There aren’t any traceable markers in our cells and you can’t grow a culture on a petri dish that will give up the secret to why we are.”

“So what is it then? Magic?”

“That or something science still can’t quantify. I really don’t know.”

“Let’s change subjects. What happened to Cheryl and Mark’s kids?”

“They’re safe and at another house. We didn’t want them anywhere around you and Lassiter’s families. You don’t have to worry about them.”

They sat in silence for a few moments before Roland asked a question. “What would you have done in my situation, Captain? What would you have done if it had been Sarah, or one of your children?”

Fulford looked at him and answered immediately. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I would have killed all three of them.”

The wind caught the side of the building and pushed at both of them with an arctic chill. They stood outside together and waited for Scott Lassiter to come back and give them his answer.