Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Read online

  And now the pack caught her scent. Every snout turned to her direction, ears up. They looked at him and then looked back south, downwind of the woman as they were. They ducked and circled round, anxious for some sign from him, some command to carry out. Would they withdraw or turn and hunt the female?

  His brow creased. How could he still catch her scent if the spell was broken and the curse washed from his soul? Maybe some vestigial powers remained with him, he reasoned, after being the wolf so long. Maybe the beast's powers dissipated slowly over time rather than vanishing all at once. Something like this, some reasonable answer. The other implication was too awful to contemplate and he chased it from his thoughts.

  The dogs grew restless, waiting. Prall made no move. He crossed his legs under him and straightened his back. None in the pack wanted this, just sitting and waiting for the enemy to come. Suicide. The pit bull leaned into him but he swatted it away. The Siberian barked in his face, openly disrespecting the alpha's decision. The others froze, expecting the beta to be brought down for its insubordination.

  Prall stymied them all and did nothing. He picked up the jawbone from where it lay in the grit, thumbing the sharp contours of the teeth.

  “Let the woman come.”

  LARA CLIMBED uphill, moving out of the marsh to higher ground. With the breeze at her back she was upwind of Prall. He'd know she was coming. It didn't matter. Nothing was going to stop her from blowing his rancid head off with twelve gauge buckshot. Not Prall, not Gallagher and not the goddamn dogs.

  She crested the rise and saw a pinprick of light twinkling through the trees up ahead. The road couldn't be that far away. The smell of the river was close. Tracking him was easy now, his stink clear in the air like an arrow pointing the way. The dogs were with him

  The ground was firmer here, hardpacked earth instead of the muddy slosh of the grove. She moved on through a stand of willows and up into a clearing.

  Ivan Prall sat cross-legged on the ground watching her approach. Waiting for her.

  “Hello,” he said.

  35

  THE DARKNESS WAS OVERWHELMING. Gallagher looked ahead and then back but it all looked the same, dark trees and uneven ground. He couldn't tell which way Mendes had run nor could he decipher north from south. The sky was clear and the stars visible, the moon a thin crescent. All of which was useless to him, a dumb-as-brick cop lost in the woods.

  Pick a direction and march, he'll hit the road or a fence. The river. He knelt and patted the wet ground until he found the Maglite he'd dropped when Mendes walloped him. He couldn't believe how hard she'd hit him. She outran him, overpowered him easily. How far gone was she? To hell with her. She'd have to fend for herself now.

  Ivan Prall would be long gone by now. The crazy sonovabitch got what he had come for. Now he would vanish along with his mutts and the file would remain open until someone consigned it away to the crypt of cold cases.

  His fingers hit the flashlight and thumbed it on. He chose a direction and just started walking. He'd find his truck and drive to Cheryl's house. Make sure Amy was okay. That was all that mattered now.

  And tell his daughter what? That he'd ditched his partner out in the swamp? He stopped and looked down at the muddy ground. What if Prall wasn't gone? Lara was chasing through the trees after a monster plucked straight out of a fairy tale. And the dogs, that pack of vicious dogs. How would he look his daughter in the eye and tell her he abandoned Lara to that?

  Damn.

  He killed the flashlight. Cast into darkness, he listened. Nothing at first, then he heard it. The low murmur of the river. The river was north. Lara had fled north.

  Orienting his way to the sound, he hit the light and started walking. Every twenty paces, he stopped to listen again, to keep his bearing straight. The ground was slick and uneven so he couldn't walk very fast. This was going to take a while.

  LARA didn’t trust her own eyes. Ivan Prall sat on the ground in a copse of willow trees. He made no move to run or even get up. Waiting for her.

  She brought the shotgun to bear and drew a bead on his chest. The dogs, invisible until now, rose out of nothing. Ghosts that made no sound, baleful eyes that watched.

  “Get on the ground,” she ordered. “Face down. Do it slow.”

  Prall didn't move. “It's over.”

  “I will blow your head off, Prall.”

  “No. You won't.” He tapped at the dirt with something in his hand. “Our business is finished. I win.”

  Lara inched further, eyes registering the position of the dogs. “Nothing is finished,” she spat.

  “Didn't you find Kovacks?” Prall raised the object in his fist and Lara tightened down on the trigger. No weapon. Just some bloody piece of bone. The missing jawbone. “Then you know,” he went on. “The monster is dead.”

  “You're still here.”

  “But the wolf is no more. The hex is broken.”

  Lara scrutinized his face, his hands. He was human again. The bastard was even grinning. Could it be true? Was the wolf really gone? “Where does that leave me? Screwed?”

  “No, no. Don't you get it?” He nodded at the barrel squared at him. “Lower the goddamn gun.”

  She didn't move.

  “You're still playing cop?” Prall laughed. “What're you gonna do, arrest me?”

  “I'm going to kill you. That's how it works, isn't it?”

  “No. I killed the wolf. I'm healed. That means you are too.”

  Nothing moved. The ghost dogs watched the standoff, waiting for a cue. An outcome.

  Her arm muscles constricted, the heavy shotgun quaking in her hands. Grit stung her eyes. Prall watched, divining the indecision in her face. “You haven't shifted yet. You haven't given in to it. You're healed.”

  “Then why do I still feel it?” The words spat through clenched teeth. “I still feel it. And I can still smell it on you.”

  “Because you got no faith.”

  “No.” The rifle dipped, becoming heavier. She notched it up a hair and sighted the barrel square at his face. “Kovacks said it wouldn't work for you. You're too far gone to ever go back.”

  He looked right down the barrel. “Kovacks was a liar.”

  Movement in her periphery. She turned but it was too late, the Siberian launched at her. She fired but the shot went wild. The Siberian's weight took her down, landing on her as her shoulder hit the earth. A dull click as the dog's jaws locked onto her arm. The gun fell away as her free hand wrenched the dog's head round until something popped and the dog yelped in pain. She kicked it off and scrambled upright but Prall knocked her back down, pinned her with his bulk. One grimy hand locked onto her windpipe as the other ripped her hair and stove her skull into the earth again and again.

  “Liar.” He spat the words at her. His eyes bloodshot, his breath blowing fetid and hot. “You liar. I'm saved!”

  She recoiled from his stench, trying to breathe. She pushed back, locked onto his eyes and spat back at him. “You're deluded, Prall. You're still a monster. Still damned.”

  Her words stung. He screamed his rebuttal but the words came out garbled and gibbering and he smashed her face with his elbow. Her eyes flashed. He slithered up her body, pinned her arms under his knees and locked his filthy hands round her throat.

  The air cracked. And then it cracked again. The chokehold disappeared. Lara recognized the sound. Gunshots.

  She rolled away, gulping in air and coughing it back up. Prall was gone, vanished from her field of vision. Further out, where the light disappeared into the grove, was the source of the gunshots. Gallagher, running in fast, the gun locked in his fist. Calling her name over and over.

  She called back but her voice snapped into a coughing jag. Her arm went up, waving. Gallagher caught it, sprinting for her. Still calling her name.

  He didn't see the dogs bounding up behind him. She called out but her voice was broken. She watched as the pack closed in fast and took Gallagher down.

  LIEUTENANT Vogel swung his
car to the shoulder, pulling in behind the one cruiser on scene. Detectives Bingham and Rowe were out the door before he killed the engine and the three of them took in the road before them. One ambulance, lights going round and round, with its back doors open. The other ambulance lay tilted on its left side, its lights dead. Shards of safety glass littered the pavement. The rear door hung open and debris trailed from it like gutted offal.

  Detective Rowe let out a slow whistle. “Christ almighty.”

  Two EMTs strapped their bloodied colleague onto a stretcher, working a ventilator tube down his ruined trachea. The surviving paramedic slouched on the ambulance bumper. A uniformed officer patted his shoulder, telling him gently that everything was going to be okay.

  Vogel marched for the uniform. “Is he hurt?”

  “He's shaken up pretty bad,” the officer said. “But he ain't injured.”

  The Lieutenant bent low to get eye-level with the trembling medical tech. “Son? Can you tell me what happened here?”

  The young man didn't react. The uniform answered for him. “He hasn't said anything since I got here. He's in shock, I guess.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Ten minutes ago. Right on the ambulance's tail.” The officer chin-cocked the injured man on the stretcher. “That guy? He was all over the road, sir. His guts, nasty.”

  “Lieutenant?” Detective Rowe leaned into the back of the lopsided bus. “Prisoner's gone.”

  Vogel paced the pavement. “They took him.”

  Bingham looked over the mayhem but couldn't hide his skepticism. “You honestly think Gallagher and Mendes did that?” He ran his light over the impact side of the downed ambulance, the way the panel crumpled inwards. “That doesn't look like any car impact to me.”

  “Then what was it?”

  Bingham raised his palms. “No idea.”

  Vogel eyeballed the debris spilling out the back of the ambulance and trailing off to the far side of the road. “So what'd they do, drag the guy off into the woods?”

  “The monster took him.”

  Vogel, Rowe and Bingham all turned their heads to the shellshocked paramedic. Vogel closed in on the young man. “What did you say, son?”

  The young man kept his head down, his voice crackling out a whisper. “That thing took him. Ripped him right out of the back.”

  “What thing?”

  “I dunno. It was big. All teeth.” His head shook, trying to shake loose some image in his brain. “A goddamn monster.”

  The Lieutenant traded looks with his detectives, all of them collectively weighing the kid's reason. The uniform offered up a condolence and said again, “The kid's in shock.”

  Vogel looked at Rowe. “Did you get ahold of Latimer and LaBayer?”

  “They're on their way. They crowed about having to come back in but when I— “

  “Hold up.” Bingham cut him off. “Did you hear that?”

  Ears cocked. A tiny pop pop in the night. Gunshots, cracking somewhere out beyond the treeline.

  36

  TEETH RIPPED INTO HIS LEG BEFORE he even hit the gravel. Face first into a puddle, brackish water up his nose. Gallagher felt their paws on his back, keeping him down with their muscled weight. Get up, get up, get up. He twisted round, trying to turn when more teeth clamped down on the back of his neck. The visegrip jaws broke the skin, a blast of hot dog breath on his ear. He snarled through muddy teeth as the animals pulled him apart.

  No way. The only cogent thought left in his brain. He roared up and bucked the weight off his back. He swung the pistol behind his head and fired blind. His eardrum burst but the teeth lifted from his neck. He swung the weapon down at the bastard ripping his calf and shot it through the head. The animal flopped to the gravel like loose dirt and the pack withdrew. He drew a bead on the Siberian and fired and missed.

  With the teeth gone, the stinging in his blown ear took hold. Like a needle straight through the drum into his brain. Instinct clamped a palm over it, a natural but useless reaction.

  When Lara erupted from the dark he damn near shot her, so crazed with pain as he was. She caught the wrist of his gunhand and pushed it down until he got his bearings. She spoke to him, her lips moving but none of it came through, nothing but the white hum stinging in his ear.

  He slid his leg out from under the dead dog and she helped him to his knees. Her lips kept moving, eyes darting everywhere for the pack. There was blood on her palm, and more of it smeared across her cheek. He asked if she was hurt, unsure if he was even getting the words out right. He must have. Lara nodded and mouthed words he could lip-read. I'm okay, I'm okay.

  She held up a palm, signing for him to stay put. Gathering up the Mossberg shotgun, she trudged off in the direction of the dogs.

  No way. He careened after her on unsteady knees, the balance of his inner ear blown off keel. She hollered at him to stay. A few words surfaced through the ringing in his head. Bad shape. Slow. Deaf.

  Screw that. Deaf and injured, no matter. He wasn't letting her go after that thing alone.

  Lara looked at the mess he was in. Bloody teeth marks and torn clothes. Worst of all the fear in his eyes from being unable to hear. His fear was something new and it bounced back to her. He was yelling into her face, unable to gauge his own volume. He wasn't making any sense but every second word was a curse so maybe he'd be okay. She waved her hand at him, indicating she wasn't going to fight him. They would both go. She didn't want to leave him behind. She didn't want to go on alone.

  They followed the gravel track, past a small boat on a trailer. More boats beyond that, some on trailers and others propped up in drydock. They'd come out of the marsh into the back acreage of a marina. She could hear the water lapping the concrete slip up ahead. The whole lot was a maze of boats and trailers, rain-battered fencing. A hundred places to hide and nothing solid to keep your back to.

  They stalked through the boats, the hulls glowing dull in the gloom like phantom ships. A dog whipped between two hulls. Gallagher aimed but the thing was long gone.

  Neither of them heard Prall slink into the open behind their backs nor did they hear the length of chain spinning in his hand. All Lara saw was the chain suddenly snap over Gallagher's throat and coil fast round his neck. Yanked hard off his feet. She chucked the Mossberg up fast and let it rip but Prall was already diving for cover.

  That was when the pack charged, bolting from their cover and rampaging for Gallagher. Flat on his back, easy prey. No, she thought. Not this time.

  She stepped into the path of the berserker dogs and barked at them. Her voice sounded all wrong in her ears, the timbre guttural and alien. The dogs skidded short, cowed by her roar. Confused as to who was suddenly the dominant animal.

  Prall cursed at them to strike. To kill. Lara spun, tilting the shotgun from her hip and fired. The broad side of the barn.

  The buckshot blew Prall off his feet and onto his back. He shot back up fast but suddenly pitched forward like a drunk. Face first into the grit. He didn't move and he didn't move.

  Holy shit. She hit him. She hit him.

  Lara bolted at him. She had no idea if Gallagher was hurt but she was not letting Prall vanish into thin air again. Gallagher would just have to survive on his own.

  Prall clawed at the earth, slithering away on his belly. Looking for a place to curl up and die. She dove both knees onto his back, heard a snap. She slammed the business end of the Mossberg into the base of his skull. Disbelief churning into exuberance. “I got you! I GOT YOU!”

  Prall raked up fistfuls of dirt, pinned under her knees like a moth to a corkboard. Blood seeped through his rancid jacket where it was perforated with buckshot. Too enraged to form words, he curled his lips back and snapped his teeth.

  Lara racked the slide, spinning off the spent shell. She pushed the barrel harder into his skull and curled her finger round the trigger piece.

  Kingdom come.

  Gallagher's hand came out of nowhere and shoved the barrel away. “Not h
ere,” he said. “Not like this.”

  THE boathouse was cavernous, all wooden beams and corrugated tin. Pleasure boats stacked in drydock. Most sheathed in tarps, the rest left to gather dust. The sound of water lapping the bay doors that opened onto the river.

  A side door was pried open. They dragged Prall inside and propped him up against a post. Lara reloaded the shotgun while Gallagher found a length of nylon rope and lashed the son of a bitch to the beam. His head lolled sideways, unconscious but still breathing.

  Lara's stomach roiled. The stench inside the boathouse burned her nose, the gas fumes and old paint making her sick. Her breathing was fast. She couldn't slow it down, couldn't ease her heart banging inside her ribs.

  “No big bad wolf now.” Gallagher's voice was too loud, still deaf in one ear. He thumbed back Prall's eyelid. The glassy eye rolled up to meet him, awareness seeping back in as the pupil dilated. “Just another asshole about to pay for his sins.”

  She said nothing. He turned to her and saw her hands shaking violently. Lara lay the shotgun down and folded her arms. “We have to do this.” He touched her arm. “We can dump him in the river. Be done with it.”

  “No.”

  He watched her eyes dart between Prall and the shotgun but she made no move to pick up the weapon. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “No. It has to be me.”

  He lifted the Mossberg by the barrel and held the stock piece out to her. Her fingers wrapped round the grip and the block slide. It felt too heavy in her hands, a dead weight threatening to pull her arm off their sockets. Gallagher stepped aside.

  “Before this,” she said, “I had never fired a round on duty.” She saw him tilt his good ear to her. “How do I just shoot a man in cold blood?”

  “He's not a man.”

  The door rattled in its frame, clawed from the outside. The dogs scratching to get in.

  Lara took two paces towards the man on the floor but the barrel remained aimed at the ground. Too heavy to raise to the target. His head swung up and looked right at her and Ivan Prall spoke her name.