Stitches: A Werewolf Gunslinger Tale Volume 2 (2 page)

The hand released my throat. “The
world would be better off if you pulled the trigger.”

I holstered my guns.

“
Maybe, but you never
answered my question. Who are you?”

The dead man sat down on the ground
and I sat down across from him. After his display of strength with
the chain, I whole heartedly believed that he could have killed the
whole town. But he didn’t lift a finger at his accusers. That had
to mean something.

“
My maker called me
Adam.”

“
Your maker?”

“
Yes. He was a genius and
madman who fancied himself a god. He thought he created life.
Instead, he created me.”

He offered no further explanation and
I asked for none.

“
I’m Lily, and I’m
a—”

“
A werewolf. I know. I
have seen your kin before. Your eyes glow like theirs, only yours
are red.”

“
Enough with the
introductions. If you didn’t kill the girl then what happened to
her?”

Adam sighed and brushed back his thin,
wispy hair.

“
I do not know. I saw the
girl yesterday morning at the general store with her mother. She
smiled and waved at me, so I smiled and waved back. Her mother took
a look at me and rushed her out of the store. That’s the reaction I
usually get.”

He looked down at his shirt and pulled
the fabric so he could see it better. Dark brownish red stains
covered the bottom of it.

“
I went to sleep last
night at my camp outside town. When I awoke, this blood was all
over my shirt and what was left of her body was next to my fire.
The townspeople were already gathered around me.”

I leaned forward and took the bottom
of his shirt in my hand. The scent of the girl’s blood was
overpowering, but another pungent scent was mixed in with it. It
was a scent that was all too familiar.

“
Adam, let’s go for a
walk.”

***

It was after two o’clock in the
morning when I rapped on the front door of the unassuming house on
the edge of town. The occupant took his time answering the door.
After several minutes, he opened it and greeted me in his sleeping
gown tucked into an old pair of pants with his shotgun in
hand.

Stanley rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes but kept a tight grip on the shotgun.

“
Lily? What are you doing
here?”

“
I’m awful sorry to bother
you at this ungodly hour, but I need your help.”

The mustached man stepped outside his
house.

“
What’s going on,
girl?”

“
The smell of your pipe
tobacco is hard to forget. It’s in your very pores, you know. You
framed an innocent man for murder and I think some justice is in
order.”

Adam stepped around the side of the
house and stood next to me. Stanly staggered backwards, fear of the
man he had executed overtaking him. He pulled the trigger on his
shotgun without aiming. The shot hit me square in the
gut.

The pain from the buckshot and scent
from my own blood was the last straw. I fell to a knee as the
change took over. My shirt got tighter so I ripped it off. I had
enough of my wits about me to take my gun belt off and drop it
before my body outgrew it. I kicked off my boots as the pain from
my transformation hit me. I screamed then I howled. In less than
half a minute, fur covered my body and my stomach was healed from
the shotgun blast. The beast was free.

The first thought in my head was to
kill the man who shot me. I looked up to find that someone else had
the same idea. Adam held the man suspended by his throat against
the side of his own house. The shotgun lay broken into two pieces
at his feet.

“
Why, Stanley?” The anger
in Adam’s voice was tinged with sorrow. “You treated me like a
friend. Why did you do this?”

Stanley held on to Adam’s wrist with
both hands, desperately trying to keep the pressure off his
neck.

“
I can’t help it! I had to
kill her. It’s not my fault. Something inside me just snaps. It was
so easy to break into her room and take her. I didn’t plan to kill
her. It is like I am watching someone else in my skin when it
happens. I like you, Adam. I do. But you were my only choice. I had
to make them think it was you. I had to.”

He still hadn’t noticed me. I wanted
to rip him open and do to him what he made it look like Adam did to
the girl. My claws were ready as I stepped towards them.

Adam’s words stopped me.

“
I will kill you, old
man.”

It was wrong. The man may have
deserved that fate and more, but we couldn’t be the ones to pass
that judgment on him. I had never killed a human with my claws and
I didn’t plan to start that night.

I placed a monstrous hand on Adam’s
shoulder.

“
Adam, no. If you do this,
you become what they think you are,” I snarled.

“
Who is to say they are
wrong, werewolf?” He tightened his grip on Stanley’s
neck.

“
I do. We do not have to
be monsters.”

He looked back at me. Stanley was
turning blue.

Without a word, he released his grip
and dropped the man to the ground. Stanley coughed and grasped his
neck.

I knelt down and grabbed his face in
my claws, forcing him to look into my glowing crimson
eyes.

“
Hello,
Stanley.”

He stuttered and stammered and tried
to move, but I held him clamped in place. I closed my eyes and
willed the change to come. The wolf did not give up easily, but I
sent her away. When I reopened my eyes, my hands had regained their
human shape along with the rest of me.

“
Y-you are both monsters.”
Stanley’s eyes were wide and drool fell down his chin. He was on
the verge of madness.

“
No, Stanley. We have
discussed this already. You are the only monster here.”

I released him and stood. I pulled on
the remains of my tattered clothing and replaced my gun
belt.

“
Let’s go talk to the
mayor. You are going to offer a full confession, leaving out what
you saw tonight, right Stanley?”

The old man looked from me to Adam and
back again, but he did not reply.

Adam placed his hand on Stanley’s
shoulder and spoke, “Right Stanley?”

Stanley nodded and hung his head.
“Right.”

***

Stanley’s body swayed in the breeze
from the very tree from which they hanged Adam a day earlier. The
crowd was smaller for the second hanging. I guess some of the
spectators didn’t have the heart to face the innocent man they
tried to kill once before.

Stanley had confessed as he was
supposed to do. Afterwards he blurted out that Adam was some kind
of devil and I was a demon. By then the mayor had heard enough. He
apologized to Adam on behalf of the town and immediately said a
prayer thanking the good Lord for showing mercy and somehow sparing
Adam’s life in what could only be called a miracle.

After they hauled away the corpse,
Hannah’s mother walked over to where Adam and I stood. She took his
hand and looked him in the eye.

“
I am so sorry, Adam. So
very sorry.” Tears streamed down her face as her husband tried to
console her.

“
I am sorry, too,” Adam
replied.

The rest of the observers returned to
their lives, leaving Adam and I alone under the hanging
tree.

“
So, what will you do
now?” I asked.

He looked towards the dirt road
leading out of town.

“
I think I’ll head that
way. Deadwood is a three day walk from here. After that, I don’t
know.”

“
In the strangest of
coincidences, I too am heading to Deadwood. You care for some
company?”

The undead giant nodded. “I’d like
that.”

“
Sorry about your head, by
the way. Did that hurt?” I pointed at the open wound between his
eyes.

“
Forget about it. I don’t
feel pain. Besides, I am held together with stitches. A few more
will make little difference in the way I look.”

“
Oh, and Adam?”

“
What?”

“
I don’t think it’s your
looks that scare people. It’s probably the fact that you smell like
moldy cheese.”

He laughed. “Then I have nothing to
worry about. I am sure that filthy dog smell you give off will
drown it right out.”

Dear Reader,

Thanks for taking the time to read the
continuing exploits of the gun slinging werewolf, Lily Farrell. She
got her start in the pages of my novel, Lucifera’s Pet, but she
could not be contained there. Stay tuned for more stories about the
werewolves, vampires, and boogey-men and women that populate the
landscape in my demented head.

Beware feral gerbils. They walk among
us.

Howlingly yours,

M.T. Murphy

[email protected]

Website:
http://www.luciferaspet.com

Myspace/Blog:
http://www.myspace.com/luciferaspet

Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/werewolfmike

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/MT-Murphy-Author/336152311014

About the Author

M.T. Murphy prefers his vampires evil,
his werewolves feral, his facial hair excessive, and thinks that
shades of gray are far more interesting than black and white. He
lives in a den deep in the woods of Alabama with his beautiful and
patient wife, their two ridiculously adorable children, and a
were-Schnauzer named Logan.