intruders. Earl waved them off. “Sorry. Kicked your case,” he explained while Heather hid her damaged hand behind her back. Phillip already didn’t like him, so he wasn’t out much taking the rap. “By accident…so back off.”
“Well, when this is over, you owe us a new one,” Phillip muttered as he stomped away.
When they were alone again, Earl went over to Heather. “Let me see your hand.”
Reluctantly, she held it out. “I didn’t hit it that hard.” Sure enough, the scratches were already pulling closed. Her hand was quivering. “I can’t believe this. This is just too much.”
On a purely technical level, Earl was astounded by the regeneration rate of the werewolves created since the surge. On a strictly practical level, he was holding the injured hand of a woman whose eyes were welling up with tears because she’d just realized that her life was over. “It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it can,” he insisted. “You don’t have to end up like them. It can be controlled.” And if you can’t control it, I’ll have to kill you. Earl quickly dismissed that unpleasant thought.
“How do you know?” she sniffed.
He was not good at comforting. It was hard to say, but he didn’t think it mattered now. “Because I’m a werewolf, too.”
Surprised, Heather jerked her hand away. “What? Get away.” Her nose crinkled as she instinctively smelled to see if he was telling the truth. “No. No, you’re normal…Oh shit, what did I just do?” Her eyes widened. “I’m smelling people now! Oh God!”
Earl raised his hands apologetically. “Well, I was a werewolf. Up until that big magic light sucked it out of me.”
“Why? How? And why the hell do I believe you?” Heather asked, taking another step back. She folded her arms defensively. “That’s why you’ve got that cage in your truck. That’s how you moved so fast back at the station. But, but why aren’t you… evil?”
So she was getting the urges already. She was hiding it well. “Listen, Heather.” He took a step closer. “I know what you’re feeling right now. You aren’t what you think, you’re what you do. You can fight it.”
“But I want to kill everybody!” she hissed, then looked around to make sure nobody could hear them. She lowered her voice. “I want to just tear their stupid faces off. I want to break their bones with my bare hands.”
“That part doesn’t ever really go away, but it does get easier to tune out. The guy that helped me learn this stuff suggested prayer and meditation. So I took up smoking. That seemed to help. Crap…I might have to be one of those annoying people that tries to quit and then whines about it,” he muttered. “I hate those people.”
“You said you were cured by magic.” Heather’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. It did sound ludicrous, even by Earl’s standards. “Hell, why not? I didn’t believe in werewolves, either, so why not magic, too? But you said at the station that there was no cure. You said that people have been looking forever!”
“What can I say?” Earl shrugged. “Up until an hour ago, I didn’t think there was one.”
She responded with a sad little laugh. “You know that running joke, about how when a girl talks about her problems, the man just wants to solve the problem, and the girl doesn’t want it solved, she just wants to talk about it?” Heather wiped her eyes. “Screw that noise. How do I solve this?”
Earl hadn’t thought of that as an option. A cure had always seemed like such a pipe dream, it was either endure or die, but now he was living proof that there was a way. Could that amulet actually cure other werewolves? The possibilities took his breath away. “That amulet, the one your prisoner talked about. That’s the key. It cured me. We’ve got to find it.”
Having been given some small bit of hope, Heather latched on with both hands. “I can kind of feel it, I think. It’s like this weird buzzing noise that won’t go away.”
As a regular man, Earl could no longer sense the real Hum, let alone the false one. He was groping blind. The only way he was going to find that thing was with Heather’s help. There was still the matter of the Alpha and his forces to deal with, but Earl had been a damn effective Hunter before he’d been cursed. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve. “We’ll head out with the teams, then break off and follow the trail right to that amulet. We find it, and we find the asshole behind this.”
“Cure me, waste him, save the town. Sounds like a plan.”
Chapter 16
The Russians had started it this time.
Sure, there was a war going on. An awful one, by all accounts, but it was the Soviets that had to go and bring a supernatural element into a normal, shitty, human conflict. Let’s say that operations that didn’t actually exist, conducted by hypothetical units, across the border into countries that may or may not have actually been involved, had been too successful. And the Soviets had loaned a specialist of their own to their allies to deal with it. As you may have guessed, there are certain specifics that I’m not allowed to ever get into, especially in a journal.
A lieutenant colonel with no name and an old man in a shirt and tie with no name gave us the final briefing during the flight into Vietnam. If the communists wanted to escalate on the supernatural front, we were supposed to respond in kind. STFU’s mission was to be put into a location where Americans were not supposed to be, and then kill the shit out of the enemy. Move and repeat.
I did not like jobs like this. Not that I wasn’t good at them. In fact, I was really good. I’d come to terms with the fact that I was a monster, but I had to be careful just how much I let the animal out to play. Even monsters have rules. Well, some of us anyway.
Ideally, our actions would attract the attention of the Russian “advisor.” It was hoped that we would then be able to neutralize him. The men without names said that he was known as Nikolai.
So we went hunting.
After running from the monster, Horst and Lins had climbed over a chain-link fence and broken into a storage unit, where they hid, freezing, until they decided it was probably safe to return to their vehicle to make a run for it. Though scared, he was careful not to show it to Lins as the two huddled in stony silence and listened to the werewolves howl. This situation was so far out of Briarwood’s league that it was depressing.
The walk back to the Caddy took forever. He’d gotten turned around while running, the snow wasn’t helping matters, and he wouldn’t admit that he was lost. Their odd route was explained away because walking down the open streets seemed like a great way to get picked off by werewolves, so they’d gone through the backyards. After twenty minutes of hopping fences, they’d reached the scorched grocery store and his Cadillac. Horst had been surprised to find that any other members of his crew had survived.
Jason Lococo was sitting on the hood, scanning for threats. Having burned through his share of silver ammo in the SAW, Loco had taken Jo Ann’s M-4 carbine, which looked like a toy in his hands, to keep watch. Horst almost said something to him about scratching the paint, but the giant looked like he might just open fire, so he refrained.
“Loco, I’m happy to see you,” Horst said, glad that their big man had been too dumb to flee. Loco just grunted an acknowledgment. “I thought you were toast.”
“Whew. I’m just glad you didn’t take the car!” Lins exclaimed.
It was obvious Loco wasn’t happy. “You had the keys.” He hopped off the Caddy, and the shocks sprang up in relief. “Let’s go.”
“Let’s get out of this stinking town,” Horst agreed.
“No. We’ve got to get to the hospital,” Loco said as he went around and opened the rear door. “It puked her up.”
“Jo?” Horst got yet another surprise to find that his girlfriend was still alive. Loco had put her in the back of the Escalade. With the third-row seats put away, there was just enough room for her to lie down. The big man had done his best to clean her up, all of their bottled waters had been emptied, and he had thrown a blanket over her.
The inside of the Caddy reeked. That new-car scent had been replaced by the stench of monster puke. Jo Ann was shivering. Her face had taken on a sickly grayish yellow tone, and she was soaked with sweat. Clumps of her long hair had fallen out, leaving purple blotches on her exposed scalp.
