Kirk nodded thoughtfully. “I figured it was some sort of monster psychology like that.”
“So why does the Russian have to die?” Earl leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. His minotaur-hide coat creaked. “Because I’m the king of werewolves, and I said so.”
Apparently, that had been the answer Kirk was looking for. “Nikolai is in America.”
“Figured that was the case. Where?”
“North of here. Middle of nowhere, Michigan. He was spotted arriving in the US last week. Intel says he was heading for a town called Copper Lake. Heard of it?”
“Can’t say I have. How do you know all this?”
“I’m retired. Not dead. I’ve still got friends in the business who like to keep me informed.” The nebulous answer indicated that he was not ready to give up all his secrets.
“Are the MCB planning to take him out?”
“The Monster Control Bureau doesn’t even know he exists. When the task force was shut down, we passed most of our files on, but not everything. Back then the MCB were just glorified cops and damage control. Our op was national security on a need-to-know basis. They didn’t need to know.”
“Good. They’d just complicate matters.” The last thing Earl needed was Myers’s goons getting in the way. “So, I answered your question, Kirk. Now you answer mine. Why’d you bring me in on this?”
Conover’s beer was half empty. He swirled the remainder around and stared at it. “You and me, we’re the last surviving members of the task force.”
“Turns out the Destroyer is still alive,” Earl pointed out.
“Really? Pitt the crazy Green Beret? Huh…Didn’t know that. He must have gone on to something so classified that even my department didn’t get a whiff of it. Well, Nikolai was our problem, and I don’t like leaving problems unsolved. I’m too damn old now. I can’t take him. Hell, I couldn’t back in my prime. You, on the other hand, can. Sure, I could call the MCB. They’d go crazy if they knew Stalin’s pet werewolf was roaming around their turf, but I’d like this to stay in the family.”
Earl could tell there was more. “And?”
Conover studied the tabletop, mulling over his answer. “Sharon used to have bad nightmares, all the time, our entire marriage. And it was always the same thing. Golden eyes and white fangs…The Russian would come for her, and he’d take our kids, too, just out of spite. She never had closure. He killed most of the task force. She always felt that he’d come back to finish the job.”
Nightmares. Earl didn’t have nightmares. He gave them.
“That son of a bitch stole years of Sharon’s life, and I couldn’t protect her. Now that I know he’s alive, I need you to destroy him, Earl, absolutely destroy him. I want him to feel how she felt. I’ve seen what you can do. Do it for the task force. Do it for her. And when you’re finished…Then I can go to Sharon’s grave and tell her it’s finally over.”
Earl raised his bottle. “For the ones that didn’t make it.”
They clinked their beers together. “To lost friends and a shitload of dead communists.”
Earl Harbinger could drink to that.
Chapter 2
The morning after the first night I changed I woke up naked in a pool of blood. None of it was mine. I was in a farm house, a little pueblo on the river. The flimsy door had been ripped off the hinges and was lying in the yard surrounded by pecking chickens. The farmer’s family was spread from one end of the place to the other, splattered on the walls, dripping from the ceiling, and turning the dirt floor into mud. I could still taste them in my mouth. Bits of them were stuck in my teeth.
It’s a hard thing to explain. The memories while I’m changed are different. They’re difficult to put into people words. It was like waking up from a dream, one that I could only partly remember, but I knew exactly what I had done to them. MHI hadn’t known much about werewolves back then. It was all a mess of myth and old wives’ tales, but now I understood how the curse was transferred. A simple bite one month before. That was all it took to end my life.
I found the farmer’s old navy Colt tossed halfway to the well. Though I could still feel where a slug had punched through my ribs under the caked-on blood, there was no wound now. The hazy memories told me that the bullet had just driven me into a frenzy. The Colt hadn’t done the farmer a lick of good, but under that bright morning sun, I prayed to God that it would work for me now. I destroyed monsters. I would not become one. I put the muzzle under my jaw and angled it to take the back of my head off.
The others would surely find this place soon enough. They’d probably already seen the gathering vultures. Hunters would learn from what happened to me and not make the same mistakes. That was the last thought I had before I dropped the hammer.
I came to later with a splitting headache. Like I said, back in those days we hadn’t known much about werewolves.
Heather Kerkonen didn’t have to work the night shift. She had enough seniority to claim days, but had always been a night person by nature. Working nights ruined any chance she had for having a social life, but excepting the occasional accident, bar fight, or somebody doing something stupid, nights were usually quieter, almost peaceful.
Last night had been an exception. It had been one call after another. The state police had found some drifter wandering around a campground, screaming about the end of the world, and had put him in the closest lockup, which happened to be Copper Lake, where the nut had promptly bit a chunk out of the jailer’s hand when they’d tried to restrain him. Heather had just come on duty and took care of the problem with a liberal dose of pepper spray and an ASP baton. After that she’d gotten a call about two hikers who hadn’t made it back to their camp yet, but that turned out to be Baraga County search and rescue’s problem. Then she’d had to check out a missing- person call because Mr. Loira had never gotten home from work-probably passed out drunk again somewhere-but all that had been interrupted when she’d heard that Joe Buckley had been mauled by a bear.
Sure, they had bears in northern Michigan-wolves, too-but nobody could remember the last time one had actually attacked someone. Heather had been incredulous when she’d heard the panicked call over the radio. It had to be a mistake. She’d driven like a madwoman to get out to Cliff Road, but by the time she’d arrived they’d already loaded Buckley into the ambulance. The early prognosis was grim, and when she saw the deep red of the puddle they’d lifted him out of, she knew that her friend was surely going to die.
Nancy Randall had found him. The poor lady was in shock. She’d been telling the other deputies about how she’d heard howling, but that was absurd. No wolf could do something like that. There were claw marks that actually pierced the metal of the patrol car’s hood.
She and the other deputies had been joined within half an hour by two representatives from the Department of Natural Resources and some volunteers with a few good hunting dogs, but they’d found no sign of the bear. The dogs wouldn’t cooperate. They’d sniffed around Buckley’s damaged car only to retreat with their tails between their legs. No amount of coaxing could get them to go back.
Heather had grown up hunting in those woods, less for fun than because they’d been poorer than dirt and the only meat that ended up on the family table had come from things that she had shot herself. However, she had no idea how to track an animal. Sitting in a tree stand and waiting for a deer to walk by doesn’t exactly make you Davy Crockett. She’d taken the Winchester shotgun from her cruiser, loaded it with heavy-duty slugs, and set out anyway. The wet ground had been so churned by clumsy footsteps at that point that she couldn’t spot a thing with her flashlight. Sunrise hadn’t helped either, and though more volunteers had arrived, the damn bear had gotten away.
The place was covered in fish cops, and the sheriff himself had taken command of the scene by the time Heather returned. Kai Hintze had been sheriff since Heather had come back to Copper Lake from Minneapolis. He was fifty years old, fifty pounds overweight, and a hardcore sci-fi nerd, so Heather hadn’t expected much from her new boss, but Sheriff Hintze had turned out to be a good leader who watched out for his men and his county. He kept getting reelected because he honestly cared about the people, and compared to his incompetent predecessor,
