Breeds 2 (17 page)

The four wardens picked up their coats and went for the door. Kirk watched them depart, watching each of them leave.

“That’s it?” he asked the pack leader.

Carma met his question with a blank face. “We stay here. Mind the treehouse and the wounded. Cook up some of the roasts and have food ready for when they get back. You know they burn through it fast. If they can eat, feed the wounded. You got a local news channel?”

Kirk looked at his small LCD flat screen. He didn’t watch much on it, preferring to read when he wanted to relax. “Yeah.”

“Then switch on that television. Bailey’s out there and sooner or later, he’ll hurt someone. When he does, there might very well be a news flash. That shit travels fast over today’s tech. If Bailey strikes and the cops are called in, we can maybe intervene before there’s a major loss of life. At the very least, we can pick up Bailey’s scent from nearby. Better than chasing down every cop car with the lights flashing. Or ambulance, for that matter.”

“Okay.”

“And Kirk?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re on guard duty, understand? So you get that lost puppy look off your goddamn face.”

The words slapped him hard, harder than a bared palm to the cheek. He nodded.

“All right,” Carma sighed. “Fire up that oven and let’s get cooking.”

“Don’t want to eat raw?” Kirk asked, still stinging.

“Don’t be a smartass,” Carma warned. “Nobody likes a smartass.”

It seemed strange to Kirk that in such a dire situation, with the city on the brink of mass killings, he’d be in the kitchen cutting up vegetables and splashing juice over simmering roasts. Carma fired up every burner, using every pot, pan, and the only roaster that came with the apartment. She then placed her phone on the kitchen counter, well within reach, tossed her coat onto a couch, and rolled up her sleeves.

Kirk was in charge of the cutting board and making things fit, while Carma puttered about, checking in on the recovering Morris and Ezekiel. Kirk allowed himself one peek at her as she passed through the apartment. Slim, barely a lick of body fat on her, and wearing a loose denim shirt and black jeans that hinted at an athletic frame. Not a trace of makeup, and skin tanned naturally by the sun. She radiated confidence, exuded military discipline. Kirk knew she could kick his ass twice over if she got angry enough.

The elders had sent their best. There was no question of who was in charge.

And because of that, he stayed close to the kitchen.

He checked on the roast, pulling the oven door down and peeking in at the chunk of meat. The heat baked his face, but the aroma.

Sweet
.

But not the sweetest.

Kirk stood there, bent over, and remembered Morris’s fumbling question about eating
weres
. His mouth moistened at the dark memory, one he’d tried to repress ever since Newfoundland. A forbidden hankering that initially gripped him while on the island, but had only increased over the months. A yearning for just what Morris had described, lurking within Kirk’s mind and at every meal––the food ingested never satisfying his palate, always demanding a tad
more
and being denied every time. The trouble was, the craving never stopped. It only increased over time, until about a month ago, when he had to deal with it. While reading a book on his couch, a voracious hunger arose within his gullet like a winter squall, prompting him to gorge himself on everything in the apartment. He’d eaten everything he had––raw––but nothing appeased that voracious appetite. So he’d fled to a late-night grocery store, bought a forty-five-dollar prime rib roast, and devoured it raw in his kitchen. And the hardest thing to deal with, the absolute torture, was resisting the impulse to tear into the food while at the checkout counter. The drive home had been no picnic either.

And the sad thing was, after he had finally devoured the meat, the craving was still there. Only partially sated.

Kirk remembered how he’d bent over his kitchen countertop, chewing away like a rabid beaver and swallowing in chunks, eying up the next bite.

The oven heat brought him back, his face cooking. Kirk closed the lid, straightened, and placed a steadying hand on the nearby counter.

The first call came thirty minutes later and Carma answered, digesting the reports with stoic authority.

“Police are on-site,” she said to Kirk, who stood wiping his hands. “They guesstimated where Bailey might’ve hit the city. Now they’re on foot.”

“You think they’ll find him?”

“We have to find him. And we have to find him before the next full moon. Else this city’s gonna get a new asshole ripped.”

“Yeah,” Kirk agreed solemnly.

The two were interrupted by a third voice drifting from the bedroom. “Hey.”

Carma immediately left the kitchen and Kirk fiddled with utensils before dropping them and following. Morris had woken up in bloodstained sheets and had shoved them down to his waist. Ezekiel lay beside him. The Pictou warden lifted his head weakly and grimaced at the two
weres
.

“Well, shit,” Morris said without a smile. “Look who it is.”

“Moses,” Kirk greeted.

Morris frowned, hating his first name.

“Back from the dead,” Carma said from the foot of the bed, ignoring the frown on the Pictou warden’s face.

“Smelled dinner.”

“Breakfast,” Kirk corrected.

Carma went in close to Morris. “How you feel?”

“Achy. But getting better.”

“You’re recovering pretty damn fast,” Carma noted.

Morris and Kirk shared a look then, one that the pack leader missed.

“Your neck was broken. And you were…” Carma inspected where his skin had broken and bled. “These are all healed.”

Morris grunted. “Take it easy.”

But Carma didn’t appear to have heard. “I mean, healed. Not even a scar. Just crusted blood. Turn your head.”

“I don’t want to. Hurts.”

“Turn your fucking head. You already moved it, so do it.”

His frown deepening, Morris did so, left and right.

“How’s that feel?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“Like before?”

“Before what?”

“Don’t fuck around,” Carma warned him. “Before you got your goddamn neck snapped, that’s before what.”

Morris made a face like he was swallowing a shit sandwich. “Yeah. Like that. I’m good.”

“Did you eat anything after you were attacked? To help yourself heal?” Carma asked, but then answered her own question. “But you were unconscious then. And banged up pretty bad.”

Morris glanced at Ezekiel’s still form and took a breath. “He stinks.”

“You don’t smell so good yourself,” Carma said. She drew back and studied him. “You look fine.”

“Feel fine.”

But the puzzlement on Carma’s face did not go away.

“It’s a miracle,” Morris whispered, feigning awe.

“It’s something, but it ain’t no miracle.”

“What’s cooking?” he asked.

“Beef roasts,” Kirk reported. “Your favorite.”

“Thanks.”

“Bring him something,” Carma said.

“Like what?”

“Goddammit Kirk, I don’t know. Bring the poor bastard something to eat, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled and went off to find exactly that. He got a tray down from one of the cupboards, opened the oven and pulled the cooking meat close. He even got out a pack of hotdogs from the fridge. In five minutes he returned to the bedroom with a small hill of food.

Carma leaned against a wall while Morris sat up in bed. Ezekiel remained passed out, the mess of his neck slowly mending itself.

“Hotdogs,” Carma said flatly. “You brought him hotdogs.”

“Yeah, so?” Kirk asked. “The roast is pink.”

“Pink is fine,” Morris rumbled.

Kirk dropped the tray before him.

“Chicken lips and assholes,” Carma smirked, flashing the first semblance of a smile since she arrived at the apartment. “All pushed into a pig’s foreskin. Yum.”

Morris ate one in two bites.

“Chew that,” the pack leader said, folding her arms. “You’ll get indigestion.”

Morris ignored her.

“So,” she said, turning her attention on Kirk. “While you were gone, Morris told me everything that happened inside. Bailey got out and killed the security force. Morris and company went in, busting open the door and allowing Bailey to escape into the wild. I would have agreed with Baxter’s original plan, but I still wish you guys had held off until we got here.”

Morris chewed away. Kirk kept his mouth shut.

“What’s puzzling the hell out of me now is your rate of recovery.”

Morris stopped, glowered, shrugged, and resumed eating.

“That all you have to say?”

“Nothin’ else to say, honey.”

Carma’s features darkened. “You know something, Moses? I can smell shit. And shit is going on here. One look at you and then Ezekiel only proves it, not that I need the blatant comparison between brands A and B. I saw you when Kirk brought you in. You were stomped on. A lump of jelly. Now look at you. Look at Ezekiel. Who do you think you’re talking to, here? Tell you what. You eat. Rest up. When you’re ready, I’ll listen.”

The phone rang and Carma exited the bedroom to answer it. When she was gone, Kirk directed his baleful attention upon Morris.

Who went right on eating.

“You comfortable?”

The early morning sun speared through ripped old blankets that Haley had nailed over the windows. Dust particles rode the light. She stood at a safe distance from the man in her living room. The guy was a brute, but he possessed as much sense as an automaton. He still wore her coat across the shoulders, but it had been some protection against the cold. He had followed her back home through the waking streets and back alleys without so much as a grunt, like an exhausted dog without a collar. He was hard-looking, perhaps in his early thirties, but with wild, haunted eyes and a staring expression that bordered on traumatic.

Not once did he moan or show any signs of discomfort while they hiked back to her place. Haley was a little nervous as she led him along, making sure she kept her eyes averted from his freely swinging junk. After a while, she had tried asking a few questions, but only got the wide-eyed gawk that made her wonder if he’d hurt his head in the hit-and-run. That or perhaps he had mental issues. Haley couldn’t decide. She had brought him to the emergency entrance of the nearest hospital, but he didn’t want to go in. Oddly, the lights seemed to agitate him. So Haley had done the next best thing.

She’d brought him home.

As she opened her front door, the startling rush of a hundred pigeons evacuating her attic all at once caused her to stare skyward. The birds streaked through the early Halifax morning in a mass of frantic migration.

Not that she’d miss the little shitters.

It was presently mid-morning, and Haley tried to make the strange man feel at home. He sat in the frayed easy chair, looking at her and the surroundings, his bare feet flat against smooth floorboards swept clean. An old blanket lay across his legs, covering up his nakedness and keeping him warm.

“Do you hear me at all?” Haley asked.

He studied her with a Neanderthal’s curiosity.

“Can you remember anything that happened a couple hours ago?”

No response.

“A car hit you. After you fought off a drunk who was attacking me.”

The guy blinked, smacked his lips and swallowed, but didn’t say a word.

Haley scratched at her gray hair. “A name, maybe?”

She’d asked that one before and got the same blank look. “Just my luck, I guess. The first man I bring home in years and you’re brain dead.”

That comment left her in a foul mood. She frowned and folded her arms. “Sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m a survivor myself, and here I am badmouthing you. You take your time. I don’t have much to eat here, but I do have water. A couple of buckets full. I take it from the public washrooms or fountains. Hasn’t killed me yet.”

She smiled at him and, to her surprise, one corner of the guy’s face hitched in return. Then it was gone.

“I don’t have any clothes that’ll fit you, so you just stay here and I’ll head down to the shelter. They have bins full of clothing. Used, but you can’t really tell. I’d say you’re a size thirty-three in the waist? Extra-large? Yeah? Well, a little bigger won’t hurt you. Shoe size about what? Eleven? Twelve? I’ll try elevens. See if they have anything. Stay there now.”

Holding up a halting hand, she backed away from her guest, and he tracked her leaving with his eyes. She wasn’t nervous around him. The poor soul had saved her. That counted for something. And if he was going to try anything, he could’ve done it long ago. The least she could do was get him in out of the cold and get some decent clothes on him.

A closet held an assortment of towels she’d found in a garbage heap. The cheap thin kind, but they would absorb some amount of blood. She took out a particularly large sweatshirt that she sometimes wore on cold nights as a final outer layer. It might fit him. She returned to the living room with an armload, the sounds of morning traffic permeating the house’s old walls.

Her guest perked up when she entered.

“Let me see that back of yours,” she said, coming in close and going around the chair. He leaned back instead, so Haley placed a hand on his broad shoulder and gently pushed him forward. His head twisted left and right, questioning her intentions, and when she attempted to lift the back of the coat, his eyes narrowed.

“Listen,” she said, staring into those black orbs and sensing the tension. “I better check. You got wicked road rash. I mean really bad. You should’ve let me take you to the hospital at least. If any of that gets infected, well, you know what that’ll mean.”

Whether it was the soft warning in her voice or the words, he relaxed. Haley pulled the coat up.

And up.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Spiny knobs and shoulder blades flexed and rippled under the new skin of her guest’s back. Not a blemish. Haley smoothed the area that had once resembled a peeled tomato with a backbone. The flesh and muscle were warm and strong.