Breeds (33 page)

The werewolf in Ross’s grip twisted free and bit down on his hand underneath its muzzle. Scalding teeth sunk into flesh, breaking bones like thin icicles.

Ross’s mouth opened all the way before a scream, momentarily shackled by surprise, ripped loose.

The blizzard moved off just after seven o’clock the next morning, and the sun peeked out shyly, almost embarrassed to gaze upon the buried land. Monstrous drifts tethered themselves to houses like the gleaming strands of musculature, while long, dune-like crests filled the roads and rendered them impassable. Nothing moved in the dawn’s revealing light. Not even a breeze.

The telephone lines opened up, and Tom Dawe called the RCMP detachment for help on behalf of the remaining residents. Overworked snow plow operators cleared the single road to Upper Amherst Cove by the afternoon, and three police cruisers followed. The law officers greeted the townspeople gathered at Tom Dawe’s residence, and learned for themselves of the horrific carnage wrought by a pack of wild dogs. Upon the recovery of several of the dogs’ bodies, officials discovered that while some of the animals possessed fatal gunshot and knife wounds, all had their throats ripped out, which puzzled the authorities to no end. Initial thoughts included a possible rabies outbreak, prompting the bodies’ removal and subsequent tagging for further study at the wildlife department located in St. John’s. Later reports would prove the rabies theory inconclusive, and the case would perplex experts for months, before more current investigations with clearer resolutions piled on top of the case study, never to be revisited.

The people of Amherst Cove took a week to mourn the souls lost on that horrific night, and arrangements were made with the local Anglican and Roman Catholic churches to coordinate closed-coffin funerals on a single afternoon three days later. The passing of folks like Samuel and Mary Walsh, Harry Shea, Kate and Karl Gibbs, to name just a few, all familiar faces of the tiny community, had left the survivors with a sense of loss so great, many said that the town itself had stepped into a grave. Never to pull itself out.

But, that all happened in the days following that first afternoon, after the snow had fallen, and a police cruiser stopped on the main road. Bundled for the cold, Officer Elizabeth Sheard trudged through snow that went past her knees in places, homing in on the little, green bungalow high on the hill. From the road, a snow-swamped deck could be made out, one that faced the ocean and offered a lovely view of a bay as polished as silver, glutted in places with pans of ice.

When she closed within ten feet of the front door, it opened.

“Morning, Officer,” Ross Kelly greeted, wearing pajama bottoms and a beige fisherman’s sweater.

“Mr. Kelly,” Elizabeth greeted. “You okay?”

He looked pale, as if he’d been on a drinking binge the night before. “Ah, no, just recovering from last night.”

“I’ve heard,” Sheard stated. “You saved some people.”

Ross didn’t immediately respond to that. A growth of beard bobbed as he swallowed. “Not all, though.”

“But enough.”

Ross glanced towards the waters.

“May I come in?” Sheard pushed. “And get a statement from you?”

“Oh. Sure.” He backed into his open door. “Come on in.”

He led her through the porch and into the entryway, past a short hall that led to the bedrooms, and gestured for her to sit at a kitchen table where the air was redolent of coffee and bacon. Patches of water, as if wet mugs had been set down, dotted the linoleum. Elizabeth made a quick study of the kitchen, saw the old-fashioned cupboards and a sink full of dishes. That and the little puddles were the only things that marred the otherwise tidy interior.

“Bachelor’s life, huh?” Elizabeth smiled faintly, sitting down.

“What? Oh, yeah.” Ross scratched the back of his head as he sat opposite her. She noticed how his other hand had been bound in medical tape, enough to look like a tight mitten. “I let it pile up for a couple of days. Unless I get a meal of moose on or something and I’m forced to clean up. But I don’t let things go too far.”

Something thumped down a hall. Sheard heard it and Ross noticed.

“My dog. He, ah, kicks in his sleep.”

“He stayed in last night?”

Ross nodded. “I think he was the only one.”

“Lucky him.” Sheard became professional. “Mr. Kelly, can you tell me what happened here in the last twelve hours?”

Ross took a deep breath, and relayed to her everything that had happened, from him discovering the ravaged corpse of Walter Borland below the hill, right up to crashing Tom Dawe’s Artic Cat and the subsequent fight on the old playground between a mad dog and what looked to be a couple of wolves.

“Wolves aren’t native to the island,” Sheard pointed out.

Ross could only shrug at that. “Might’ve been a breed. Coyote mix.”

Sheard supposed that could be the case, as only just a year ago a local shot and killed a coyote-wolf crossbreed. She moved on to other things of interest in the investigation, asked her questions, and finished up well within an hour. As far as she could see, Ross Kelly wasn’t lying to her in the least. Battered and sickly he might be, but a liar he wasn’t.

“If we have any further questions I’ll be in touch,” Sheard said as she stepped outside.

“I’ll be here,” Ross informed her. “Not going anywhere for a while. Not until my nerves are settled a bit.”

Sheard regarded him for a moment, thinking on those last few words, but ultimately letting them go.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Kelly.”

Ross waved and closed the door. Through the door’s window he watched the officer trek all the way back to her cruiser, white against white and strips of red. Only when the car moved off did he return to his kitchen.

There, sitting at the table in a robe that barely fit him, sat a glowering Morris, missing a nose and a hand.

“We need to talk,” Morris said.

“About?”

“Us.” Morris fixed him with cold eyes. “You.”

Ross hadn’t told Officer Sheard everything. That would open a can of worms he didn’t think would ever close, and Doug’s (or Kirk, as Morris called him) warning on the matter rang clear to him.
Let it pass. Just let it pass
.

“What about me?” Ross asked and coughed. He didn’t think it was a bug.

“Bring him in here,” Kirk called out from the spare bedroom, causing both men to turn. Morris gestured for Ross to lead the way. They entered the room where Kirk rested, splayed out over the mattress with roughshod splints on his legs. His chest was bare, and the silver gash simmered and sucked in light, never to completely heal. Kirk regarded Ross with his one good eye, as if he’d settled on what to say only just an hour before. Ross tried very hard not to look at the frightful hole already filling with a stomach-turning opaque sheen.

“You know what we are,” Kirk said.

Ross swallowed and nodded.

“You know… you’re one of us too, now.”

“Because of this?” Ross lifted his bandaged hand.

“Yeah. Because of that. You feel it, right?”

That not unpleasant burning sensation all the way down to his testicles? “Yeah.”

It was Kirk’s turn to nod while Morris stood behind Ross, blocking any exit as if he expected the man to lose it. So far, the man had been rattled, but he hadn’t rolled. Not yet, anyway.

“You have until the next full moon,” Kirk informed him. “Then, well, your life’s gonna change. Some think for the better. Some, for the worse. But you saw the dogs. What they became. Who knows what their bite might’ve done to you. But I’m pretty sure my bite will… overtake theirs.”

“So… I’ll be like you?” Ross had seen Kirk change from wolf to man last night, in the early-morning hours as the storm finally moved off over the Atlantic. Considering everything else that had happened, it didn’t freak him out as much as it should have.

“Yeah. You’ll be like us.”

In that space of time, silence buzzed.

“So, what then?”

“Life’s gonna change,” Morris rumbled from behind.

“Your life’s gonna change,” Kirk repeated. “Morris and I have talked about it. I’ll make a phone call a little later, with your permission, but Walt Borland wasn’t all that you thought he was. And now that he’s dead, well… a position’s opened. Neither of us are from around here. We think, given the circumstances, you might be the best choice to fill the opening.”

“Doing what?”

“Being the law,” Morris stated before Kirk could answer.

“Being the law,” the Halifax man echoed.

Ross stood there, appearing uncertain with everything, but still holding it together. “For how long?”

For life,
Kirk wanted to tell him, knowing that he’d no longer age as a regular person, and, sooner or later, he’d have to move to another part of the island, assume a new identity, and live there until it was time to move again.

Again and again, to hide how the years no longer changed him. Not like the human populace.

But that would be overload right now. He could see it in Ross Kelly’s eyes, smell it in his pores. Saw the way he held the hand Kirk had bitten. In the time between now and the next full moon, when Ross underwent his birthing transformation, there would be a lot of talk. A lot of drinking, too, no doubt. But Kirk and probably Morris would be around, just to ensure Ross didn’t do anything stupid. In the aftermath of the brutal night they shared and fought, Kirk sensed a softening of Morris’s attitude towards him. He could smell it when the Pictou warden had returned to Ross’s house after the chore of sniffing out the dead and the near-dead breeds during the predawn hours, ensuring that all the abominations were killed.

When Morris had reverted back to his human form, the big man had actually smiled weakly at him.

It would do.

Ross, however, was another matter entirely. Kirk
believed
the Newfoundlander was all right, but bringing a new wolf into the grand pack had its own set of rules to follow.

A wolf that would be a warden from the get-go, no less.

Thinking back, as a recovering Kirk had done for most of the morning, there’d been no other way to save Ross’s life. The breed had infected him. Even in his bloodied state, the taint hung about Ross like bad cologne. Kirk could have killed him, but instead decided to transfer the curse––a strain he hoped would overpower whatever invader was in Ross Kelly’s system––and thus save his life.

At least, what was left of it. Only time would tell if Kirk had made the right choice.

Only the passing of long, long years would reveal if Ross would come to hate him.

When ye reach my age. Ye’ll see. The lies. Jus’ wait.
Borland’s voice rose up in the back of his mind. The memory had invaded his thoughts and now bothered Kirk incessantly.

I’m not a monster
, he projected, into the silence of the newest werewolf’s unanswered questions.

Kirk regarded the floor as a chill caressed his flesh.

I’m not…

Am I?