The human’s sobs sickened him. It was hard to imagine that he’d once been that soft and pathetic himself.
You were. Until I came along.
“Control yourself,” Nikolai ordered. “Where are the creatures?”
Still shaking uncontrollably, he wiped his eyes. His name tag read Stevenson. Besides fear, he smelled of petrol and cigarettes. “At the grocery store. Bud was unloading his ice-cream truck. I went in to fire up the generator. Powers out,” he explained as Nikolai cocked his head to the side. The young werewolves would have been attracted to the noise and activity. “Have to keep the heat on or the veggies wilt.” Shivering, he folded his arms in a vain attempt to stay warm. “Thanks, buddy. My name’s Justin. You saved my bacon. We better get out of here, though. There were at least two more of tho-”
Nikolai reached up, grabbed a handful of hair, and brutally drove Justin’s face into the thick metal at the top of the plow blade. There was a sickening crack as teeth shattered. Nikolai let him flop limply into the snow.
Excellent.
For a moment he wasn’t sure if that impulsive action had been his, or the Tvar within. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Nikolai decided to accept responsibility. “His whining annoyed me.”
He walked over to where the other werewolf had fallen. The blood splatter was bright and easy to spot on the snow. He got on his knees and drank in the scent, then picked up a handful of slush and put it in his mouth, rolling it around, savoring the arterial blood and the smoky taste of bone marrow. She was young and had not been one of them for long, a few months perhaps, but long enough to be a valued member of the enemy pack. Particles of silver began to burn his gums, so he spit the blood out.
Badly wounded, unable to regenerate from the poisonous silver, she would surely retreat to her Alpha to die amongst her pack.
Clever and ruthless. I like this side of us.
Justin moaned incoherently as he returned to the truck. Nikolai climbed back into the cab, ground it into gear, and drove, trapping and dragging the weak human beneath the plow blade. The body was dislodged within half a block and crushed beneath the tires. The bump barely registered. Nikolai rolled the window down as he drove slowly, savoring the painful cold and following the scent of blood.
Not knowing who else in her small department was still alive, Heather had tried Sheriff Hintze’s home first. It was near the station, by itself at the end of a long driveway, but Harbinger’s truck was barely sufficient to get even that far without chains. No one who lived in Copper County was a stranger to snow, but this storm was absurd, even by Michigan standards. The only reason the roads were still passable at all was because the howling wind was pushing most of the accumulation off the flat spots. There had to have been two feet in the last hour.
The lack of radio and phone was infuriating. Help was as close as the next county over, but there was no way to reach them. As soon as she had some help, she’d send somebody on a snowmobile, but until then she was on her own. She had left a note at the station, just in case somebody else came in, but she doubted that anyone would. Copper County was a relatively unpopulated place and had a correspondingly small sheriff’s department. There weren’t that many deputies to begin with, and she knew that almost half of them had been killed in the last few hours. Heather had a bad feeling about the others.
Heather knew that she was too late as soon as she arrived at the sheriff’s house. His front door was wide open, already lodged in place by a fresh drift. The beam of her flashlight found what was left of Sheriff Hintze right inside the front hall, wearing pajamas and missing most of his neck.
A few hours ago, that sight would have scared her, perhaps even made her nauseous. Now she just felt anger. She crouched next to the body, with her Winchester 1300 ready to blast anything that moved, but the house was quiet except for the creaking of old boards. The thing that had done this was long gone. She caught herself sniffing the air, shook her head, and retreated to the porch.
Harbinger had said that it was a coordinated attack. Of course they had eliminated the sheriff. Her boss had been a sharp man and would have stood in their way. Yet why did she believe Harbinger? He was a mystery. And if she were to believe what Harbinger told her about the attack, then why shouldn’t she believe him about the other things he had said? Her shoulder itched, but it didn’t even hurt in the slightest. She was scared to look at it.
The night had already been so emotionally draining that the sight of her dead boss hadn’t even disturbed her. Heather simply returned to the still-running pickup truck and set out for her next destination. She was so hungry it hurt. Heather could smell the food in the backseat and dragged Harbinger’s cooler around. Barely slowing to rip the packaging off, she started stuffing her face, not even caring what it was, as she drove back down the sheriff’s driveway. Regardless of what Harbinger told her, she still had responsibilities to attend to. She’d taken an oath to protect and serve, and she took that oath very seriously.
A few lights were on at the corner grocery.
It was a relatively small building. The kind of locally owned, overpriced, but convenient place that managed to hang on despite competition from big chain stores. It had already been decorated for Christmas. The signs said this place was called Value Sense Grocery, sixpacks of Dr. Pepper were on sale, and there was a werewolf noisily devouring the contents of some poor sucker’s chest cavity right inside the front door by the shopping carts.
Earl crouched behind the oblong block of ice that he suspected was concealing a mailbox and watched the windows. He was downwind, and even if it suddenly shifted, as it kept on doing, he’d put the wolfsbane back into a pocket. Other than the one visible target, there was at least one other member of the pack in there. He wanted to make sure he got as many as possible, as fast as possible. Anything that ran meant he would have to chase them down, and that would take time. Time spent chasing was time that could be better spent proactively killing these upstart punks before they murdered too many innocents.
The dark brown fur of a second enemy was briefly visible as it moved past the cash registers and a plastic Santa Claus. It joined the first, lighter-colored werewolf over the human remains. The two began to snap at each other, competing playfully for the tastier bits. The lighter-colored one was dominant, and the newcomer moved to the other end and started chewing on a leg.
“Enjoy that last meal, boys,” Earl said to himself as he came out of the snow and walked for the front door. Lifting the Thompson, he waited until he was just on the other side of the heavy glass door and couldn’t possibly miss.
Seeing those two there, just having a good old time, really irked him. He’d worked hard for over eighty years to make up for his own early mistakes, and these youngsters thought that they could come along and do whatever the hell they felt like. Earl realized he was grinding his teeth together. Wanting them to see their punishment coming, Earl raised the muzzle of the Thompson and banged it hard on the glass. “Hey!”
The two heads snapped up instantly, dripping blood and chunks of flesh, glaring at him.
The Tommy gun roared as Earl mowed them down. He worked the subgun back and forth, emptying an entire stick magazine of silver. 45 bullets into the two werewolves, a continuous stream of hot brass flying out the side. A row of soda bottles behind them exploded as the monsters jerked and twitched. The werewolves fell as Earl ducked under the door rail and through the broken glass, already yanking the spent mag from the Thompson.
The light one was dead. The dark male was trying to crawl away, its body perforated multiple times. The wounds were closing. “Oh, a new guy, huh?” Earl shouted as he pulled the bolt back on a fresh mag. “I guess nobody told you about the two rules?” The werewolf had reached the check stand and was using it to pull himself up. Earl let the hot subgun hang by its sling as he drew his bowie knife.
The werewolf turned, snarling. Earl swung the heavy blade, cleaving through half the throat in one mighty swing. The werewolf fell back, blood squirting everywhere. “And rule number one is no killing”-Earl raised the blade again and slashed it through the other side; the werewolf’s head spun free and landed, bouncing down the rubber belt of the check stand-“innocent people!” The body tottered for a second before falling. It hit the floor with a dull thud, one leg kicking spastically.
Earl lowered his dripping knife. He could hear a generator running in back. The lights over the check stands were on, giving him a good look. The now-headless body still had the tattered remains of a red grocery apron tied around the midsection. Another poor sap, turned today. Earl spat on the floor.
“What’s rule number two?”
Raising the bowie, Earl turned toward the voice. It had come from the middle of the store, somewhere between the aisles, but he couldn’t see anyone. Most of the store’s lights were still off. “Who’re you supposed to
