Breeds (4 page)

Yet, here he was, forced to kill another of his own kind.

Not my kind
, Borland seethed, spittle spilling over lips stretched by curved teeth. Droplets speckled the young visitor’s lower pants. Refusal to live under such pretenses any longer was only part of the reason Borland didn’t care for the Elder’s rule. The real reason was something much more frightening. It was previously thought that he or any
Were
was damn near invincible to any disease of man. Yet here, in his twilight years, the onset of cancer in his system filled his enhanced senses like the stench of rotting cheese. Eating the human’s food had been the cause of it. If he were allowed to eat what he was supposed to feast upon,
when
he wanted, he damned well knew he wouldn’t be as poisoned with chemical toxins as he presently was. That he even upheld the law while suffering in secret only added to his misery.

Upholding
lies
.

But not anymore.

Not while he still drew breath.

There wouldn’t be much time, Borland realized, and so he flipped the dead warden onto his front. He raked one claw down the length of the coat, parting the material as if he were tugging on a zipper instead. Borland dug into Blackbeard’s exposed back, ripping out the gray stuffing of his winter coat until he uncovered the leather scabbard of the Bowie. Moments later, he stood up with the freed casing and sheathed the knife before sticking it down the back of his own jeans. Borland had his own ceremonial blade, a length of forged death bestowed upon wardens as a lethal badge of their authority. All wolves hunting in a warden’s territory recognized the symbol, and adhered to his word before engaging in any hunt. In any killing. To protect their existence from the human herds.

Such…
shit
.

Borland didn’t know when, but somewhere along the years, the wolves of the day had lost their balls.

The techno harping that passed as pop music spurted from Blackbeard’s pocket. Frowning, Borland grabbed and shook the corpse by the ankle as if he were a doll. The music repeated. Who would be calling this length of pink dog cock? Blackbeard’s form shivered violently as Borland continued shaking him over his floor.

Then something hit the wood with a clunk.

A cell phone lay face up, lighting up the shadows with its harsh song.

Borland picked it up with his three-inch claws. He bobbled the device for an instant before transferring it to one hand. With the other, he tapped what he thought was the button to further activate the device.

Cautiously, untrusting of the plastic, he pressed the cellphone to his ear. Listened.

Even territories away, Borland sensed the Elders. Could smell their tainted musk.

“Well?” a voice asked in his ear.

“Well what?”

“Is it done?”

“I killed him.”

Hesitation. Then dawning realization, laced with loathing. “Borland.”

“Aye, tis I, ye goddamn sack of dog shite.”

Silence. The wind rasped against a nearby pane, drawing Borland’s attention to the one window he could see out. Snow splashed the glass.

“You killed him?” the voice asked dubiously.

“Y’deaf as well as fuckin’ stupid?”

Silence again. Then, from the other end of the satellite connection, came words spoken with hatred as raw and ugly as torn flesh––a tone Borland understood.

“You just killed yourself, you ancient…
fuck
.”

More silence, the Elder waiting for a reply. Borland gave one. “No, b’y.” His bared fangs warped the words and he exerted pressure around the black casing of the cell phone while injecting red fury into his next breath.

“I’ve just declared
war.
”

The device splintered with a
pop
from the crushing strength of his hand and the line went dead. Borland allowed gravity to take the crumpled plastic from his open palm. It plunked onto the floorboards with a clunk, a surprisingly lonely sound. He stared balefully at the device. Outside, the wind rose to an eerie pitch.

Borland’s eyes flickered to the window.

“Bring it, homie,” he hissed with a flawless mainland accent.

And crushed the phone under his heavy boot.

Snow rasped against the window, but Douglas Kirk paid little heed to it. He sat on his warm sofa, ass deep into cozy cushions, feet crossed and up on a coffee table. The windows to his apartment had been pulled closed, sealing him inside. A lamp shed soft light near his shoulder, which he peeked over to read.

To think.

And to drink.

But more importantly, to drink.

Anyone looking at Kirk’s bearded face would place him in his thirties. A lean if not athletic build, clothed in worn pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that read, “Fuck Housework.” He lay sprawled on his couch in utter shitfaced stupidity, staring ahead at a wall, holding a paperback in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He’d been drinking since early yesterday evening, passed out sometime after midnight, only to wake up just before dawn and continue his beer buzz. Kirk wasn’t an alcoholic. Hardly drank at all, in fact. But some days, like yesterday, he exacerbated the depressing funk of winter by shutting himself off from the world and just lighting up his senses. A damn fine idea. When the night lifted, revealing a hoary morning like a busking magician pulling back a tattered sheet, he’d felt inclined to just pull the curtains closed, lock the world out, and stay in the zone of being pleasantly shitfaced. Read some classic literature, even.

Kirk thought all the classics went down better with beer.

He idly scratched at the overgrown beard hanging off his chin, feeling the snarl of thickening whiskers, and lifted the bottle for a lazy sip. Already he had a warm buzz on. By supper, he planned to be properly fixed with toe tags. No one would come knocking. His neighbors knew better than to disturb him, and the mailbox was on the bottom floor of the apartment building, six levels down. The walls were built solid enough that he could only hear voices if someone shouted just outside his door, and at this time of the day, most folks would be at work.

Not him.

He didn’t work. Not like regular people. And he was aware of people in his building who suspected him of questionable activity and income. In their eyes, he was an urban hillbilly. A concrete redneck. A recluse spotted outside of his apartment with as much regularity as Bigfoot and one to observe at a safe, non-threatening distance if at all possible. His questionable hygiene and usual, disheveled attire of track pants and t-shirts reeked of bad news.

He didn’t care. His appearance kept them at a distance, and Kirk made it a point not to interact with any of them unless he absolutely had no choice.

They… reminded him of things.

Of different times, long past.

The last two gulps of beer sloshed in the bottle as he drained them down. He dropped the empty bottle into his lap. His head sunk into the couch, coaxing him to stretch out for perhaps another nap. Just a minute between rounds. Blinking heavily, Kirk regarded the dark of the living room, focused on nothing. His eyelids eventually closed.

He felt himself slipping.

Deep forest.

A magical plume of breath on the air.

His muscles ached gloriously as his limbs worked in powerful arcs, racing across a hinterland drying from summer rain. The moon peeked through the branches above, eyeing his sprinting form with white malevolence. Blood was on the air, and the smell of musk. Of heat.

Her
heat.

A howl eased through the midnight hour, but he paid it no heed. It was far off. Too far to make a difference, and he knew instinctively she wanted him and only him.

Not the others.

I’m not a monster
.

The trail opened and he ran over the ground, keeping low, following the scent. The forest tipped as the path curved and twisted, through rocks and alongside streams that appeared like glacial flows of silver. Closer now.

She barked. Whined.

Ahead, through the trees, he could see her shape.

And she danced, growling, sounding like a machine…

Reality pulled him back, warping the dream in a waking stretch.

The phone buzzed on the coffee table, chasing a non-existent tail. A light the size of a pinhead winked on and off, insisting that Kirk answer it. Kirk didn’t
want
to answer it. He felt that picking the cell phone up and bouncing it off a wall would be a better idea. Or just placing it on the floor and crushing it with a boot. Anything would be better than answering the thing. He hated the phone, despised the presence of the thing, especially when he was in his dreams.

But he had to have it.

The Elders made him take it. Ordered him to. Just in case.

One arm lay hooked behind his head like the twitchy half of a set of meaty rabbit ears, while the other, he realized, still held a well-used paperback of
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. The book he’d been reading before he fell asleep. An open case of Alexander Keith’s Beer lay just beneath his hand, half its soldiers wiped out.

A fifth buzz and the little plastic slab continued to whine.

Kirk frowned, nudging the book where it rested on his chest.

A sixth.

Answering the device seemed to be a very bad idea. The insistence, the urgency of the whine reached out beyond the cell phone’s frame, providing plenty of reason to blatantly ignore it. To hunker down and just keep on reading, and get pleasantly shitfaced while doing so.

Until sleep took him. Back to her.

He picked up on the eighth.

“Yeah,” he snapped, grimacing, hating himself for giving in.

“We have trouble.”

The voice set Kirk’s backbone tingling as if someone had just stropped it with a straight razor. He recognized the voice. The brevity of it. His suspicions were correct the first time around.
Should never have picked up
. “What do I do?”

“Go to Halifax Airport. Check in with Porter’s airline. There’ll be a one-way ticket waiting for you. You’re going to Newfoundland. Place called Upper Amherst Cove on the Bonavista peninsula. You do the job, call me, and there’ll be a ticket to get back. Understood?”

“Yeah. What do I do there?” Kirk asked, forcing sobriety into his voice and hoping the person on the other end wouldn’t detect anything off.

“You find an old dog by the name of Borland. You gut him.”

That made Kirk blink.

“He was the local warden,” the voice continued. “Now he’s gone dark. One of the pack went up there just a month ago to do some hunting. Never came back. We sent the West Coast warden over there to find him, and to check in with Borland. Borland killed him just today. Thirty minutes ago, in fact. We called and he answered the warden’s phone. Imagine our surprise. Freely admitted to killing both the hunter and the warden. Actually said he was declaring war. We don’t know why, except that he’s one of the oldest. Probably the oldest of us
all
out east. Might have gone crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“We believe he’s gone crazy. Dementia. Alzheimer’s.”

That slap of cold information made Kirk balk. He sat up, sober in the eye of the storm. “You’re kidding. We… we can go
crazy
?”

“Blame it on something in the water, the food, the hole in the ozone layer, whatever. It happens. Rarely, but it happens. And it’s happened on the Rock. Easiest explanation. Regardless, we can’t have him running wild over there. There
are
people over there. You understand?”

“Yeah.” Kirk pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah.”

“We’re sending you over there with Morris.”

Well, shit.
And that chill rushed up his spine again, like fingers swishing piano keys in a violent flourish. He knew better than to say anything, but he did anyway. “Why two of us?”

“Borland’s already killed two, including a warden from the West Coast. He’s dangerous.”

“How old is he?”

“Old,” the voice stressed. “Never mind exactly how old. You just keep in mind he’s murdered two who were much, much younger than him. He put them down and
laughed
about it. Laughed right in my ear. He might be old, but he’s
dangerous
. You heed that, and you kill him.”

Christ
, Kirk thought. Right into the fire. “When do I go?”

“As soon as we’re done here. And Kirk…”

“Yeah?”

“Make no mistake. You’re going over there to hunt down and bleed an old fuck dead. Don’t you care one goddamn about how old he is. Or what’s he’s done. He gets no respect. And don’t dare show any mercy. The lines have been drawn on this one. Understand?”

With the phone to his ear, Kirk nodded. “Yeah.”

Not one for dawdling, Borland gripped Blackbeard by his ankle and pulled him towards the door, smearing the dark elegance of the blood pooled on the floor. Borland retracted his fangs and claws, felt his wereblood ebbing, but he figured he’d have just enough strength to get the body out back. It took energy to force the change and to maintain it. The speed of the change, essentially channeling it where it mattered the most, was his secret weapon. Ordinarily a young wolf had no control over the transformation, like a human baby having no control over its bowel movements. When the moon was full, the
Were
changed, regardless of when or where. He changed. But as time went on, the change
could
be controlled, even delayed a bit on the nights when the moon blazed, and initiated even on nights when there was no moon. A complete change still took time, at most three minutes if one let himself go. Three minutes, Borland had learned long ago, was a long time if one were rushed or pressed. It could mean the difference between life and death. He realized one didn’t really need to go full wolf if their life was at risk, and over time, he learned to morph his body in the places where needed,
when
needed. Claws. Fangs. Strength and speed. The final form of the wolf was the purest, the pinnacle of the gift, and nothing felt finer than running through a forest at midnight, with the path lit up by the moon. Nothing could compare to the natural high of being in that state. Borland dreaded never being able to feel that rush again, even after dying. But the
half
form, the ‘quick draw’ of the change which he could unleash in a very shocking second, was his secret weapon.