human senses were weak; he felt blurry, slow and hungover, but he could already tell that she was well along the change. Her eyes gleamed just a shade too metallic, her skin was flushed, her movements too fluid. The others might not be able to tell, and she probably didn’t know it herself, but he recognized the signs from experience. Heather Kerkonen was a full-on werewolf.
And that change had occurred in a matter of hours… Normally it took weeks. Earl swallowed hard. That ain’t good.
“What’d you find, deputy?” asked Nancy.
“A lot of dead people and even more empty houses. But we found a few more survivors. They’re in the foyer getting checked for bites before I let them in,” she said. “The werewolves are on the move out there. We don’t need any in here.” That statement struck Earl as particularly ironic.
This time it was Phillip, the high-school principal, that interjected. “Not more of this werewolf nonsense. There’s got to be a rational explanation.”
Deadly serious, Heather put her shotgun over one shoulder and scanned the crowd. “I figured you might be having this conversation. I’ve got something everyone needs to see…” She motioned two men forward. Each was carrying one end of a tarp-wrapped object that was very clearly a body. “Show them.”
“Heather, there’s kids here,” said the man supporting the narrower end of the tarp. “Maybe we should-”
“They need to see it, too. There’s no time for doubt,” Heather said as she pulled her gloves off and eyed Phillip coldly. Earl had seen that look before. She was probably wondering what he tasted like. “Unwrap her.”
The two men dropped their burden. It hit the wood with a dull thud. As they pulled the blue tarp away, the crowd gasped. A few looked away.
“ Look at it,” Heather ordered.
The werewolf was female. Deprived of his sense of smell, estimating age was out of the question. Gold eyes open, the lips were pulled back over bloodstained teeth. The cause of death was obvious, since the ribcage had been broken open and the heart was gone. That would certainly do the deed. Even for the fiercest skeptics in the crowd, the mostly humanoid creature was a slap in the face.
“It must be some sort of undiscovered animal,” Phillip sputtered. “A cryptid! Or some genetic experiment that escaped.”
“Yep. There’s lots of money in crossing gorillas and timber wolves.” Earl snorted. “Those science types are downright full of wacky fun.”
Heather squatted beside the corpse, roughly grabbed one wrist, and lifted it without saying a word. The braver members of the front row got up and approached. The young vet was the first to notice Heather’s point. “It’s wearing a wedding ring.”
The skeptical faction turned to the principal, who had somehow gotten himself appointed as their leader in the last few seconds. “Somebody must have put a ring on the animal.”
“Crap. Why, Phillip?” someone shouted. “Are you retarded?”
Heather glared at Phillip. Then she roughly dropped the limb and reached for the gaping chest wound. “I noticed this while I was cutting the heart out before it could regenerate.”
There was a cluster of people around the werewolf now, looking almost like a football huddle. The soldier spoke again. “What are those bags?”
“Well, Matthew, those appear to be breast implants,” said Nancy as she stepped away from the huddle, rubbing her eyes. “Well, apparently this thing had a boob job.”
Phillip had no response to that revelation.
“There’s more,” Heather said. “Anybody recognize this?” There was a long moment of silence. The people in the circle all exchanged glances. The audience was struggling to see. Several of the witnesses began to swear.
“Rose Greer had that same tattoo, same place. We used to work together at the substation before she went to nights,” said one of them.
It was Nancy that spoke up again, loudly. “Phillip, can you think of any reason somebody would stick a wedding ring on a wild animal, give it breast implants, and then tattoo a little rose on its neck?”
Phillip, obviously, had no response. Earl was about to make a comment about the kind of weird stuff you could find on the Internet, but now was not the time for sarcasm.
Heather walked away from the body and turned to the bleachers. Her voice echoed through the entire gym. “Look at it. Look at her. Yesterday that thing was Rose…” She let that sink in for a moment. “After she killed everyone at the power company and wrecked the place, she walked home. I caught her eating her husband. That is what we’re facing. There’s more of these out there right now. Some of them are strangers, like the man who tore up our jail. Some of them are our friends, or neighbors, or people you see at the store, or people you go to church with. But not anymore.”
The huddle had broken up so that everyone could see the twisted corpse.
“Now they’re something else.” Heather walked over, angry, shotgun still over one shoulder, and kicked the dead werewolf, brutally hard, right in the snout. Blood flecks splattered down the tarp. Earl tensed a bit, but remarkably Heather seemed to be keeping it under control. “They’re the enemy. And we have to destroy them before they get the rest of us.”
The atmosphere in the room had changed. They were committed now. Heather, a local, had swayed them where he, an outsider, could not. Heather risked a quick glance Earl’s way, as if to see how she’d done. He nodded approvingly. She looked away, almost embarrassed, but not before he caught the flash of gold in her eyes. Tough, to the point, Heather would have made one hell of a good Hunter.
Too bad he was probably going to have to put her down before the night was through.
The volunteers left ten minutes later. There were three smaller teams, one for each way out of Copper Lake. Earl had made sure that each team had some of his silver ammo and some MHI phone numbers. Using snowmobiles and moving quick, they might have a chance. He suspected that this Alpha would have set some impediments in their way, and would have loved to go with them, but he was needed on offense. Two bigger teams were heading out momentarily to cause trouble and find survivors.
Heather joined Earl as he was strapping into his older suit of armor. It was pocked with burn marks and holes, but he was glad that he’d packed the spare. His leather coat fit over it, too, and he needed the added warmth. Humans got cold really easy. They were in the shadows of the main hall; the lights were out to conserve the juice. Heather stopped, folded her arms, and leaned against the trophy case. She watched him for a while, but didn’t speak.
“This suit has seen better days,” Earl said, trying to make conversation. There was a holster on each hip, gunfighter style. He removed a S amp;W. 45 Nightguard from the bag, checked to make sure the revolver was loaded, and stuffed it into the left holster. “I’m going back out there.”
“I know. And by the way, saying thank-you for me saving your life would be nice. You look pretty healthy for someone who didn’t have a pulse an hour ago.”
Actually, he was feeling all right. Clumsy, slow, less capable than he was used to, but healthy. He had a sneaking suspicion that he should be dead, but that either something had gone wrong, or that amulet had left him alive for some unknowable reason. “Thanks,” Earl answered. “Seriously. Thank you.”
She bit her lip as she summoned her courage. “Harbinger, level with me…”
He already knew what she was going to ask. “You’ve been cursed.” He kept his voice low so it wouldn’t carry into the auditorium.
“You sure?”
He took out the second. 45, opened the cylinder, confirmed it was loaded, snapped it shut, and holstered. “I’m positive. Sorry.”
She nodded slowly. “I just thought maybe…never mind.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s not fair.” Heather stepped away from the trophy case, hands curled into fists. “Shit!” She slammed her fist into the heavy cabinet. The wood splintered, the glass shattered, and trophies and plaques spilled out. It made a terrible racket. Heather drew her hand back, shocked at the hole she’d put through the case. “How-”
“You’re gonna have to be a little more careful with your temper,” Earl suggested. “Super strength and hitting stuff when you get angry don’t go well together.”
Half a dozen townsfolk led by the principal converged on the noise within seconds, ready to blast the
