Beneath a Winter Moon (47 page)

Deluth stuck his head out the door. “Huth, Sorret? You know what to do. Kaley? You stay right out here and come only when I call for you.”

The three men nodded.

“Alright then, let’s crack this nut.” He smiled at his own humor, gesturing for Snow to follow him inside.

What an ass
, Snow thought as he stepped into the room.

* * * * *

Thomas and Delmar threw their daypacks over their shoulders and headed toward the wood line. Delmar stopped. “What about Jenny? You saw her since I stacked the wood around her? I did it when you were sleeping—should we do anything else?”

Thomas shook his head. “No time. She will have to stay as she lay.”

Delmar nodded reluctantly and the two men cautiously moved forward in the direction of the rising sun…where the werewolf had ran, and where they hoped to find Alastair.

Delmar ran ahead of Thomas, following the large tracks in the snow. They had wasted half an hour trying to find the correct trail. Although Thomas had seen the general direction of the beast’s retreat, the werewolf had circled and approached so many times that it was difficult to find the right set of tracks. Finally, they had come upon what looked like the freshest of the tracks, the snow around them black with the werewolf’s blood.

The sun was up, and though the falling snow and the thick clouds dimmed its rays, they nevertheless felt rejuvenated, even inspired. The day belonged to them—the werewolf could not survive in the light of day, and that thought inspired a hope that the darkness had not allowed. Somewhere out there was a man, where the beast had been. Thomas had sworn that they would find Alastair. He was without a shelter…without proper clothing, and without food and water…though the two men could not help but think that Alastair might have more caches in the forest. The previous day, they had found Alastair pulling supplies from a large, weatherproof cache, and it all made sense now. If Alastair could not control where he awoke after changing back to his human form, he might well face death at the hands of the environment. What better way to give him a leg up than to have caches carefully placed and well hidden throughout the forest?

Delmar stopped and looked at the tracks. They had gone at least half of a mile, maybe more, into the woods and now the pattern of the tracks changed. The tracks in front of them were all around, and pointing in all directions, almost as if the beast had been dancing with itself in a small circle.

“Look there,” Thomas said, pointing to a set of tracks leading out from the dance.

Delmar grunted and walked beside the tracks. “These are different. We haven’t seen blood in a while, and it was walking when it made these—not running.”

Thomas nodded and gripped the double-barreled 10-gauge tightly, then glanced over his shoulder to ensure that his own rifle still hung there. He knew it was there, of course, but it was habit. He was involuntarily falling back into the old ways, the ways of a soldier—stalking the enemy and keeping a careful eye out for ambush.

Within a few minutes, deep inside a thicket of dead, brown vines and brambles, they found a strange and bloody site. The snow was beaten down all around them, as if a struggle had taken place. There were patches of snow that had turned either red or black with blood, and in the center of the area were some tufts of oily black fur and what looked like vomit.

Thomas cocked his head. “What the hell is that?” He was pointing at a small, bloody sack-like thing made of some sort of clear tissue. The sack was the size of a golf ball, but it was misshapen, its form reminding Thomas of a mango. Attached to it was a very thin cord made of a yellowish clear tissue, perhaps a foot in length.

Delmar frowned. “Looks like a damned placenta.” He paused, looking at the ground, away from where they stood. “This has to be where he changed.” He pointed to some nearby tracks. “It definitely is. Look, those are human tracks.”

Thomas nodded. “I see them—and that’s not placenta…”

Delmar shook his head. “No shit.” He prodded the thing with his rifle barrel. “Fucking nasty.”

Thomas set the big rifle down and threw the daypack from his shoulders. He scrambled around inside and came up with a large, sealable clear plastic bag.

“You aren’t really thinking of taking that damned thing, are you?” Delmar protested with a grimace.

“Why not,” Thomas said as he knelt down. “We have this, we might have something to prove the story—and that would help us figure out what the hell to do from there.”

Delmar grunted. “Well, then hurry up with your specimen collection, doctor
Devereaux
. We need to move.” He stood over what he thought was the exact spot that the beast had lay, rolling, twisting, turning as it changed back into human form—into Alastair McLeod. The snow was packed down hard in that spot.
Where did the rest go
? Delmar thought. He shook his head, disgusted, and then tried to stifle a sharp stab of fear as it rose into his throat—a fear that he might undergo just such nightmarish transformation in the future. It was all crazy.

“You okay, Hero?” Thomas asked.

“What?” Delmar looked over, as if suddenly awakened from sleep. “Oh. Oh yeah—I’m okay. Just looking at all of this…shit.”

Thomas put a hand on Delmar’s shoulder and shook the big man. “We are going to get him, and we are going to find out how to take care of you.” He slapped him hard on his arm. “
WE
. It’s
we
, and it will always be.”

“Thanks,” Delmar muttered. “So, let’s go and find him.”

 Thomas nodded. “The son of a bitch can’t be far, now. What say we not only
find
the bastard, but that we help to ensure that he breathes his last breath? What say we make him talk—then we show him out of the world of the living?”

“Indeed,” Delmar nodded. He pointed to the human tracks leading west. The difference in size and shape in comparison to those of the werewolf was astonishing. The tracks were like those of a child. “He’s this way.”

* * * * *

The interview was not going well for Alan Tucker. Snow had done his best to act as a stand-in for a real friend—a stand-in for someone who really could lend support, but it appeared that he wasn’t needed. Alan had been more than happy to answer all of
Deluth’s
questions, and slowly but surely the cunning officer turned the young man’s words against him.

Deluth began by asking Alan to tell the whole story, from start to finish. The hard-nosed officer apparently had a hard time sitting and listening through it all—he fidgeted and moved around, looked away—as if the end could not come soon enough. When Alan finished, Deluth took a new tack, breaking the story down bit-by-bit, hour-by-hour, hell, almost minute-by-minute.

Deluth kept going back to Alan’s original claim that he was now a werewolf—that he had been bitten by the attacker(s) and was now certainly cursed with lycanthropy. Alan tried to explain what the doctors had said to him—that sometimes the mind blocks all memory of a horrible incident, but then what comes back when the gates begin to reopen isn’t real at all. The memories that leak back through the gates are jumbled with fantasy or hallucination.

Even Snow began to go along with that reasoning; right up until Deluth began passing large glossy photographs to Alan.

“See that one?” he’d say to Alan. “That is a clear print of whatever attacked the horses. It’s not a bear track, is it, Alan? Ever seen a bear leave such a track?”

Alan said nothing, other than to remind Deluth that he had seen those tracks already. The next set of photos contained images of tracks from the area near the helicopter crew’s bodies. “They are the same tracks, see? The same. Not a bear.”

Alan frowned at Deluth, and Snow tried to intervene. “It almost sounds like you are trying to convince the boy that he really was attacked by a werewolf,” Snow interrupted.

Deluth ignored Snow’s comment and instead asked Alan to remove his shirt, which the young man reluctantly did. Though Snow had seen the scars before, he still gasped at the horrific site. Deluth stood up and leaned over to look at them.

“You said that these were injuries that you sustained the night of the attack. You first said that a werewolf attacked you, and yet another werewolf saved your life…or at least distracted the first werewolf long enough for you to run away. Isn’t that right?”

Alan nodded.

Deluth looked at the scars again, focusing on what appeared to be a pattern of teeth marks. He slowly reached out. “May I?” he asked.

Alan nodded. Deluth touched several of the small scars. “Bite wound. Large canine shape, but a bear can’t be counted out in my opinion. It will take an expert and a close examination.”

Snow could not wait any longer. “Captain Deluth, you cannot be seriously entertaining the idea that there really was a werewolf, right? Please tell me that you are not trying to give that impression, and that it is just coming out that way.”

* * * * *

Deluth stepped back and turned to glower at Snow. He held up a finger as a mother would to an over talkative five-year old child. He turned back to Alan.

“I think that you don’t have one single memory of a bear. I think that no matter what you try or what you have been told, you could not describe it as a bear.” He leaned forward, clutching the aluminum bed railing in both hands while looking into Alan’s eyes. “This is important, son. I want you to take yourself back to the moment you laid eyes on the attacker. I want you to tell me exactly what you saw—even if everyone on the planet has told you that it simply cannot be.” He paused. “Don’t use the word, werewolf. Don’t use the word, bear. In fact, don’t use any animal for comparison, not even a dog. Describe it as if you have absolutely nothing to compare it with—like it was totally new to your eyes. I need every detail, son. The color of its eyes, the color of the fur, the size, the shape, the weight—even the temperament. I need it all. Can you do that for me?”

Alan’s face was as white as a sheet. He glanced over
Deluth’s
shoulder to look into Snow’s eyes. Snow caught the look and sighed. He nodded slightly. Alan seemed to take comfort in that. “I can try.”

With
Deluth’s
careful and amazingly gentle guidance, Alan described the creature. Snow’s skin crawled more and more with each passing sentence, with each newly described feature. By the time that Alan was finished, Snow was completely terrified of the image that the young man had put forth. The beast was now very clear in his mind, and the thing was terrifying.

Deluth pulled up a chair from the corner of the room and sat down near Snow, staring at Alan the whole time. He let his head drop into his hands and he ran his fingers through the thick black hair. He looked up and nodded at Alan. “Thank you, son. That’s what I needed to hear.”

Alan stammered, “Am I crazy, then? Am I completely out of my mind?”

Deluth shook his head. “No, son, you are not—either of those things.”

He stood up and walked back to Alan, put a hand gently on his wrist. “It’s going to be alright, Alan. Everything is going to be just fine.” He smiled, and Snow caught a glimpse of it, and knew that the expression was a prelude to disaster. Snow began to feel that this whole interview had taken a turn that Deluth had dreaded, and that now he was lying to the boy’s face—everything was
not
going to be okay.

Deluth walked over to Snow and gestured for him to get up. He turned to Alan. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to check with my team on how the investigation is going.”