Breeds 2 (9 page)

Kirk couldn’t wrap his head around the reasoning.

Morris cleared his throat. “You better get on over to Claymore Lake. See what you can find out.”

“How do I get there?”

Morris supplied directions. “And get back here when you can. Just in case that bastard’s still alive. I don’t think he is, but better safer than sorry.”

“You’ll be okay?”

A scowl cut the warden’s face. “Yes, goddammit, I’ll be okay. Getting better by the second. My asshole’s a ring of fire from all the sunshine I’m holdin’ in.”

“All right,” Kirk fished his keys from his pocket. “I’m gone.”

“And Kirk?”

The Halifax warden stopped with his hand on the doorknob. Morris fixed him with a dark, unwavering glare. “One more thing. Something we didn’t talk about since the island, but since you’re here. Since I’m here. Maybe another thing to think about why Bailey did what he did…”

“What?”

“Have you…” Morris stopped, visibly struggling with how to word his thoughts. “Have you been getting cravings?”

Kirk slowly released the doorknob and regarded the sitting warden with growing unease. “Like what?”

“Like… more.”

Kirk suddenly felt very cold.

“More… substance. Y’know?”

The cabin seemed small to Kirk then, the walls constricting. His guts clenched and froze as if he’d just downed a shovel’s worth of ice.

“I, ah,” Morris sniffed and swallowed thickly. “I get these urges, y’know? I mean, we all hunger for meat, people being the best cuts, but you know how that is. Can’t have steak every night so we make do with other cuts. It’s takeout compared to prime rib. But… ever since Borland, whatever I eat just isn’t doing the trick. I want… I want more.”

“Jesus Christ, Morris,” Kirk hissed, knowing exactly what he meant, what was coming.

The Pictou Warden stayed firm, however, and didn’t change course. “Yeah. More of that. More of what I had on the island. You know what I mean, right? Ever since Borland. And every day since then, the, uh, craving is only getting…”

“No,” Kirk said in a low tone. “I don’t have any of that.”

Morris closed his mouth and studied his companion. “You sure?”

Kirk left the cabin.

Gravel crunched under the pickup’s tires as Kirk drove along the dirt road. Flower arrangements tastefully adorned with purple and pink ribbons lined the shoulders. The attack only took place a night ago but people moved quickly to respect the dead. The sun splashed gold across the lake’s edge, the water glimpsed through tall posts of birch that reminded Kirk of prison bars. A cage.

Life’s a cage
, he thought darkly.
This caged life
.

He clung to that thought, using it like a flimsy shield to divert his mind from darker, more insidious paths.

The outpouring of sympathetic flowers blurred by and Kirk took his foot off the gas, realizing he was speeding. He crossed his wrists as he turned the wheel and eased onto the brake. Up ahead, the blackened husk of a ravaged lakeside cabin stood in the strengthening morning light, the one blemish in an otherwise picturesque October dawn. Yellow strips of police tape spanned the driveway and sections of the front lawn beyond, like a spider’s web left in ruins by something much too big to catch.

Kirk put the old truck in park and ran a finger across his brow in a contemplative line, absorbing the destruction at the end of the driveway. The roof of the cabin had fallen in and, looking at the skeletal beams pointing at the sky, Kirk was struck by the impression that something mighty had descended from above and pinched the roof away, causing it to crumble. Morris whispered at the absolute fringes of his mind, an eerie but electric line of syllables Kirk mentally shoved away.

Only to have his own traitorous conscience gnaw away at his thoughts.

What if Morris was right? What if the werewolf called Bailey
was
trying to kill him? Kirk winced at the idea. Why would Bailey attempt to kill him? Because he was crazy? Like Borland? But if he
wasn’t
crazy, then why was he trying to kill Morris? And if successful in killing Morris, would Bailey have then hunted down Kirk?

That train of thought arrived at an even more disturbing destination.

Who sent Bailey?

A sensation of nausea erupted in the base of his stomach, just above his jeans, and Kirk frowned at the unwanted feeling. Just what he needed—to suspect the elders. But if the elders hadn’t sent Bailey, then who? Or was Bailey merely operating alone?

A tapping on the window startled him.

An older, bearded man stared into the truck. Concern clouded his face. Kirk composed himself and fumbled for the window crank. As the glass descended, the old guy’s face lightened.

“Mornin’,” he greeted in a voice that bespoke a three-pack-a-day habit.

“How you doin’?”

“Good. Good mornin’.”

“Better for some, I imagine,” Kirk said, nodding toward the cabin’s remains.

“Yeah, I suppose it is. You a friend of the deceased?”

Kirk had to think for a second. “No. Just out for a drive. Saw the cabin from the road. Stopped to take it all in.”

“Just takin’ a look?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re late then. All the action happened the other night. I have a place just down the road here. Gunshots got me moving for the phone. I moved out here to get away from this kinda shit in Halifax. Never figured I’d move
closer
to it.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Terrible, terrible night,” the old guy said and stared sadly at the scorched structure. “Three men died in that blaze. All burned up. A fourth was torn apart and a fifth was shot. Had his damn head blown off. Damn, damn shame. Drugs and booze behind it all, least that’s what I heard.”

Kirk studied the old man’s profile. “Really? Drugs and booze?”

“Oh yeah. Overheard some of the paramedics leaving the scene. The one guy who lived was strung out on a mix of
ganja
and beer. Or so I heard, like I said. I’m not so sure. I’ve seen a lot of violent drunks, but not one violent hophead. Strange.”

“A guy was torn apart, you say?” Kirk asked.

“Yeah,” the neighbor said with face of horror. “Didn’t see it, only the little markers the cops set up to show all those places. Where the limbs and other parts fell.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Something, ‘eh? Done by a wolf or a breed of coyote and wolf. There were tracks all over the place. Strange thing, though.”

“Another strange thing?”

“This one has strange all over it,” the old guy said with an incredulous air. “The owner of the place was a man by the name of Hutchinson. He was taken away by the police for questioning. As he was being walked out—walked out, mind you—he was going on about how he shot the animal right there on his front lawn.”

A hand pointed in the general location but nothing marked the spot.

“Anyway, the weird thing was… Hutchinson swore that he blew the head off the animal. Like, emptied the magazine into the thing until there was nothing left. A shotgun decapitation.”

A ghostly breath chilled Kirk and his mouth went dry.

“Killed the thing dead, and left fragments of head all over the place. But when the cops got there, it wasn’t a wolf or coyote or whatever. It was a naked man.”

Kirk tried hard not to show any emotion, but blinked all the same.

“What?” the warden whispered, knowing he
had
to have heard wrong.

“Oh yeah,” the old guy said with the conviction of a person who’d witnessed it all. “Shot an animal, he said, and it changed into a dead man. Makes me wonder just what they’re loading into them Mary-Ju-Wanna sticks these days.”

Kirk’s head swiveled toward the cabin’s front, his eyes narrowing, magnifying the wrecked details of the destroyed weekend getaway. His body temperature dropped a couple of degrees. More words zipped past him, spoken by the kindly old codger orbiting on his left, but Kirk had zoned out of the message.

“Excuse me,” the Halifax warden finally said. “You mentioned… you mentioned something about a wolf having its head shot off?”

“Oh yeah. Well, it was really a g––”

“The whole head?”

The neighborly gent studied Kirk as if he were a victim of a car wreck. “You okay, buddy?”

Kirk couldn’t muster a smile. “Stomach cramps. Listen, the head. Of the wolf. You’re sure it was gone? I mean, destroyed?”

The old man whisked his fingertips underneath his chin and across his throat in the universal meaning. “Nothing above the shoulders. Hutchinson unloaded the whole magazine of a twelve gauge into that poor bastard’s pudding. The whole melon was gone. Totally gone. I didn’t see but someone said there was nothing left but shards. Like a clay pot dropped from three or four floors up. And afterwards? There was a whole army of cops and plainclothes types like them you see on the forensic TV shows, ‘eh? At one point I thought they might break out the vacuum cleaners, just to see what they might turn up in the grass. One woman was using tweezers on yon tree over there. They bagged what they could, I imagine, and hauled it off to Halifax.”

Kirk didn’t bother looking. “Halifax.”

The man smiled. “Yeah. Guess they’ll inspect the body down there. Try and figure out the cause of death.”

“Thanks,” the warden replied, senses whirling. He fumbled for the keys and started up the truck, allowing one last, thanking nod at the accommodating neighbor.

Spinning dirt, Kirk racked the pickup into reverse and got the hell away from the cabin.

As trees fluted by, the singular thought of
Oh shit
ran circles in his mind. He was no longer feeling sick. That sensation had been replaced. Someone had done the impossible––a fairy-tale nightmare deeply rooted in legend and fear, the expressly
forbidden.

Someone had decapitated a werewolf.

A werewolf could only be killed by silver, fire, or having its throat ripped out by the jaws of another werewolf. The magic that enabled them all to transform––for better or for worse––possessed an even darker side, a sinister side, unleashed only upon the first transformation. Or when the
were
had its head separated from its body.

A body which would eventually
regrow
the missing bauble.

Kirk’s foot pushed down on the accelerator, urging the machine to fly.

He had to get back to Morris.

They had to contact the elders.

The truck made it back to Morris’s cabin, but Kirk believed the rugged dirt road had claimed every vital part needed for the vehicle to ever start again. He stopped on the front lawn, right at the cabin door, and nearly snapped the gearstick in half upon placing the pickup in park. Kirk leaped from the machine to the steps and crashed into the front door. He barged into the Pictou warden’s dwelling and halted just beyond the threshold.

Morris remained in his easy chair and cocked an eyebrow at the intrusion. He had donned a pair of cut-off jeans and sandals and administered several medicinal beers, the empties collecting at the chair’s base. A half-emptied case was well within reach of his right arm. His skin appeared to be in even better condition than before, and black fuzz had sprouted from his scalp.

“We have to contact the elders,” Kirk blurted. “Bailey had his head blown off.”

“Wha…” Morris trailed off in disbelief. “But that means… what?”

“You know what.”

“But that’s only…” Morris faltered in the distressed glare Kirk fixed him with. “That’s only a fuckin’
legend
.”

“It’s enough for me,” Kirk said and pulled out his phone. “You good with this?”

Morris shrank back in his chair, the
Bad Dog
decal of his shirt partially obscured by wrinkles. “No. But, yeah. Do it.”

Kirk speed-dialed the elders’ number and slapped the unit to his ear. “Yeah, it’s Kirk in Halifax. Call me when you can. It’s urgent. Real urgent. A real fuckin’ emergency.”

He hung up and immediately plucked a beer from Morris’s case without asking. Morris didn’t stop him.

“Holy shit…” the Pictou warden whispered.

Kirk answered by popping the beer tab and chugging half the can’s contents.

“You think it’s possible?” Morris asked with uncharacteristic fear.

“That Bailey will go on a fuckin’ rampage once he regrows his head? Only happened once, right?”

“Supposedly.”

“In 1202.”

“The year of the Fourth Crusade. The––the sacking of that city.”

“Zabor.”

“Zadar,” Morris corrected.

Kirk drained the other half of the beer and tossed a crumpled can into the case. He quickly extracted another and Morris joined him.

“This shit doesn’t work fast enough,” Kirk complained.

“I’m through half a dozen,” Morris said. “Now I’m suddenly sober.”

“Should call again.”

“You called already.”

“Why haven’t they called back, then?” Kirk shouted. He glanced out the window.

“Fuckin’ slow down and breathe,” Morris ordered. “They’ll call. They always call. It’s what they do.”

Kirk went to his favorite corner in the cabin and watched the road.

“What happened out there?” Morris finally asked.

Kirk told him.

“Christ,” Morris exhaled. “This is… bad. Like dirty bomb bad.”

“I know,” Kirk agreed. He studied his beer, knowing he shouldn’t be drinking at such a time.

The phone rang, silencing both wardens. They exchanged pensive looks before Kirk answered.

“Yes?” the elder asked, cold and calculated with the barest touch of annoyance.

“This is Kirk. I’m in Pictou with Morris. We might have a problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“A
were
called Bailey came out this way a couple of nights ago. Morris got a weird vibe from the bastard and it turned out he wasn’t wrong. He says the
were
tried to kill him and it almost did. Almost cooked him in a fire. Bailey nearly killed him, except Bailey got shot by a man. Got his head blown off. I mean
off,
like there was nothing left.”

The other end of the connection remained quiet, the air grim and contemplative, ominous in its silence.

“Hello?”

A pause. “I’m listening.”