Breeds (10 page)

With the air cutting at his face and ears like icy razors, Kirk followed.

The pair hiked up a short incline, leaving deep boot prints as they followed the buried country road, past a bleak graveyard on the right, and onwards towards the base of a monstrous hill that loomed ahead, glimpsed only when the wind subsided. Stinging snow strafed their faces, and they squinted against the onslaught. The wind continued to strengthen, forcing them to slow and lean into it as they placed one foot in front of the next.

Minutes later, the men reached a parting between a fence of flailing trees and brush, revealing a frozen pond.

“There,” Kirk said, pointing towards the raging gray curtain ripping across the surface. “His cabin’s in there.”

Morris didn’t say anything. His beard and hair were coated in frost.

“Think we should change?” Kirk asked.

“No. Keep your nose open. You’ll smell him if he’s changing or changed. And if he has, we’ll do the same.”

“It’ll be too late then.”

Morris made harsh side-eyes at him. “That fucker’s got to be what? Two––three hundred years old? Takes me two minutes to go over. If we can’t beat him to the draw, we
deserve
to be gutted.”

Kirk mulled that over. “What about the speech then?”

“What?” Morris grated. “That one about crimes against us all? And we’re the executioners and fuckin’ yadda yadda? I forgot that years ago. Besides, this fucknut’s already nailed two of ours. One of them, or, fuck, maybe even both gave him the speech.” Morris shook his head. “Look. He’s there. He hasn’t changed. Let’s kill him and get a goddamn taxi outta here in the morning. All right?”

Kirk rubbed his chin and noticed Morris’s leather duster was open, his knife sheath jutting from his belt. His own Bowie knife lay at the small of his back, fixed in place by a belt sheath. Apparently feeling the conversation was over, Morris left the road. Kirk followed, and both waded through low drifts that sucked them down to their knees. They struggled to the edge of the pond and dropped their suitcases in the icy brush, thinking they’d retrieve them later. Their hands freed, Kirk and Morris stepped away from each other, and made their way across the icy surface colored in a flat shade of twilight.

Behind them, the road vanished in a violent screen of white.

The wind thumped against the side of the cabin and rumbled along its length like a wrecking ball turned aside, causing the timbers to creak, the way ancient mariners’ rigging creaked atop choppy waters. Borland sniffed the air, noted the drop in temperature, and sat up on his couch. With the storm building in strength, it was difficult to smell anything, and he wasn’t certain if he did catch a whiff of something or not. But this was war footing, so he limped to his door, cursing his joints with every step, and peeked out the window facing the pond, looking past the comet’s tail of frost etched across the glass. The distance to the road was equal to a soccer field, Borland reckoned, but today, as he scrunched up his face and sniffed the air, anyone crossing that flat top of icing would think it three times that length. He’d known men who’d gone sealing in the early 1900s who’d been swept off Atlantic ice pans by ferocious gales and plunked into the frigid drink, chilled to their bony marrows before five fathoms down, or crushed into bright jam by closing ice.

He sniffed again, slow and tasting. When the gusts subsided, as if drawing breath for the next barrage, a ghostly hint of
something
reached him. His nose drew in a great deciphering breath…

Leather.

Nylon… Fur.

Skin.

And
silver
.

That metallic tang hung about his own person and burned in his nostrils. Borland shook his head, slowly hummed the first bars of “
We’ll Rant and We’ll Roar,”
and checked his belt. One knife lay there in its sheath, tucked in tight. The other was firm against his lower back, out of sight. Borland sniffed again and coughed, which erupted into a horrific hacking that lasted near ten seconds. He eventually regained control and glanced outside with his knowing, red-rimmed eyes.

Snow lashed across the cabin in ferocious sheets.

Then darkness festered within the blank purity of the storm’s curtain, like a bruise coming to the surface. One figure. Big lad. Striding through the dull glare like an eerie juggernaut.

The enemy.

Borland scowled. He almost got to coughing once more when he spotted the second warrior, smaller than the first, but just as relentless in pushing through the blowing snow. Both men had their hands free and swinging at their sides like gunslingers of old.

With his throat and chest stinging and shoulders hitching, Borland pulled back from the window and went to the table. He grimly picked up the shotgun and loaded his winter coat’s pockets with extra shells. Then he pumped the weapon and pointed it at the door, at one section he’d thinned out so that the shot would have no trouble blasting through the sheet of wood, right around gut level. Borland took a steadying breath, suppressing the tickle in his lungs. He fingered the trigger and braced his legs for the recoil.

“C’mon den, y’fuckers,” he wheezed with a snarl, showing the worn stubs of his teeth. “C’mon in.”

The cabin appeared as a square lump at first, but as the two men got closer, it solidified into a squat but stout little dwelling. A second structure fluttered in and out of sight just beyond. The cold seeped through Kirk’s jeans and gnawed on his legs, the only place his winter coat didn’t reach. His cheeks felt flayed with ice. If the snow bothered Morris, he didn’t show it. The man’s hair and beard had gone near white in the blizzard’s growing frenzy, while his eyes smoldered with heat.

Two bursts of wind halted their march, nearly blowing them over into the sifting powder that was gathering on the pond’s surface. But the wind exhausted itself, not yet powerful enough to whisk the hunters away, and Kirk and Morris righted themselves and pressed on. In time, they crossed the ice, stopping not twenty paces out from the cabin.

“Smell anything?” Kirk drew close and hollered over the wind. He knew he did, but it was strange. More like… dogs.

Morris, however, shook his head and plodded straight to the door with all the subtlety of a bulldozer.

Kirk strayed five steps to the left. The cabin grew darker in the dreary afternoon light, like a face about to spit something distasteful. Ice-glazed planks covered the windows in haphazard fashion. The barest whiff of frozen blood hooked his nose, briefly diverting his attention to the other structure behind the cabin.

Both men drew their knives, the silver as bright as moonglow on dark water.

Morris reached the front step.

Borland’s snarl hardened into a dead man’s grimace. The wood just outside his door gave a wretched squeak, telling him that someone was there. His finger tightened on the trigger.

And the shotgun spoke.

Part of the door exploded in a punch of splinters, blasting Morris flat on his back and freezing Kirk in his tracks. The door flew open and rattled on its hinges as Borland, dressed in winter clothing, appeared with a roar of fury. He spotted Kirk, paralyzed like a startled deer, and swung the sawed-off cannon in his direction. Kirk blurred to one side as the shot shredded only air.

Morris groaned and rolled over, revealing a bloody print in the snow the size of a hubcap. One fist held his silver knife. He looked up as Borland leveled the shotgun, pumped it, and fired—destroying the left set of ribs of the hit man and driving him skidding five feet away. Morris gasped in pain and dropped his blade, fingers quivering.

“Hey!” Borland shouted, training the shotgun’s barrel at the corner of his house, where the other one had fled. “Come ‘ere y’little
prick
.”

Borland then fixed his gun on the shaking fingers of his first victim. He walked up to the wincing figure, inspecting how the pellets had shredded a grisly hole of meat and bone in the torso. There wasn’t anything on the face of the planet that could shrug off such a wound. Losing interest, he pumped the weapon and crushed the wrist with his boot heel, trapping the hand.

Borland aimed. “Else I get mad.”

He squeezed the trigger and destroyed the man’s appendage in one blast. Fingers jumped and disappeared in drifts. The black-bearded biker sort flopped about as if he’d been zapped by an over-charged defibrillator. Borland kicked him in the face, flipping him onto his back. His handless wrist hosed the ground in bright scarlet.

“Hey!” Borland shouted again, a gust of wind buffeting him. He racked the shotgun again, sending a blue shell casing flying into the wind. “Get out here ye little shit! And as a man ‘afore I truly fuck up yer partner.”

Borland pointed the warm muzzle of the weapon into his victim’s face. The crippled man’s eyes were open, but glazed with shock. Borland waited a few seconds more.

“Fuck it,” the old man growled. He pulled his knife from his belt. Time was a’ wastin’. Borland eyed both corners of the cabin before dropping to one knee.

Kirk burst out from around the corner, drawing Borland’s attention. The Newfoundlander whirled, fired and missed. Kirk charged in, lunging when he got close enough. Borland dropped the shotgun in favor of the blade just as Kirk tackled him. Both men flew backwards and landed hard in a drift, away from the mess of Morris. For fleeting seconds, they flailed at each other, attempting to grab the other’s silver.

Kirk gripped Borland’s knife hand while Borland frantically grabbed Kirk’s. Kirk overpowered his foe, pushing him down. He stabbed and his blade surfed the swell of the old man’s forearm before catching on a sleeve with a rip. The tip stabbed deep into snow to the left of Borland’s weathered face, drawing a look of fear and fury. Kirk pulled the weapon back, keeping his adversary’s blade at bay. The old man hadn’t the strength to stop him, managing only to hold on and slow the action.

Kirk took aim, placing his weight behind his knife arm. The silver tip slowly descended once more, like a lengthening icicle, straight for Borland’s left eye. Kirk focused on that dark slit, determined to finish his target. The Newfoundlander squirmed to no avail.

Then the unexpected happened.

Borland
smiled
, exposing a mouth of canine fangs. The old man’s eyes flickered entirely black and he wheezed out a chuckle as foul as crypt gas. The startling transformation seized all the energy out of Kirk’s attack and, for a split second, he made the fatal mistake of being transfixed.

Borland’s grip on Kirk’s wrist became a vice. Bones cracked. Kirk cried out. Frightening strength surged through the old man, power only a
Were
could summon, yet Borland was neither man nor wolf, but rather an
in-between
.

Kirk had no choice but to release the blade. A hoarse giggle escaped Borland. He opened his maw of curved teeth––and snapped at his attacker’s face. Kirk jerked his head back before ramming his forehead down, bursting Borland’s nose.

The old man howled and
flung
his adversary away with enough force to nearly yank Kirk’s right arm out of its socket. He crashed into snow and jagged wood. The cabin’s front steps. Kirk rolled over and struggled unsteadily to his feet.

Before him stood Borland, who threw his arms wide as if flinging back a cape, and hissed in pain. A sheet of blood drenched his winter clothing. Then he giggled, coughed, and snapped those long teeth that much rather belonged in a wolf’s head. He still held his knife, and the blade shone with pale menace in the blowing snow. Black eyes fixed on Kirk, nearly mesmerizing him with their evil mirth. Kirk realized then, with a cold knob of terror seizing his guts, exactly the reason why the Elders wanted this man dead.

The young
Were
bolted for the open door of the cabin. He flew over the threshold, grabbing the door and whipping it shut behind him. Possessing supernatural speed, Borland crashed through the planks, wrecking the entrance of his home. A clawed hand lashed out and rent lines through the denim of Kirk’s coat and the flesh of his back, strumming his spine in an electric chord that almost paralyzed him. The blow sent him sprawling into a pile of stacked wood. The neat tower clattered to the floor and Kirk went with it all, twisting onto his back. Borland rallied and dove for the floundering youth.

Kirk got his feet up into the midsection of the old
Were’s
diving form, and flung the creature over him to crash into a potbellied stove. The funnel broke free of the ceiling with a metallic
poof
of soot and ash, covering the interior in a black veil. Kirk stood up as Borland thrashed around on rolling junks of cut wood, falling to his knees twice before barking a harsh cough. His claws slashed through the gray-black haze, rendering it into coils of smoke.

Borland got one leg under him, but not before Kirk stepped in and smashed his skull with a chunk of firewood, jacking the
Were’s
head to the side. Another cracked into Borland’s sputtering face. Shards of enamel flew. A third blow pounded into the creature’s neck, bowing him at the shoulders.

But Borland stood up with all the power of a rising titan.

Kirk slammed the wood into an ear, half-mangling it from the monster’s skull. Then he chopped downwards and sent the Bowie skittering from a clawed hand. The other freakish paw flashed out and grabbed Kirk by his coat. With a hacking, lung-clearing salvo, Borland heaved him though a closed door. The wood splintered into shards and sinews as he passed through and continued on, until a solid wall halted his flight. Kirk bounced on a bed before tumbling off and hitting the floor, rallying through a daze to make sense of what just happened.

Borland stepped into the wrecked doorway, his coughing fit subsiding, and blocked any escape. He held up his hands, shaking out fingers that sprouted ivory knives. Kirk struggled to his feet, using the wall for support as he tried to clear his head. As an afterthought, he flipped the heavy, wooden bed and heaved it towards the door in a powerful skitter, but it was a flimsy roadblock at best.