Breeds (23 page)

Kirk staggered back. The breed’s face screwed up and dropped from sight. A second later the door shook in its frame as something slammed against it. The wood held, built solid to withstand Newfoundland winters, but that didn’t deter the
Weres
from trying to come through it. The barrier trembled again. Guttural chatter could be heard just beyond. Dark heads gathered and bobbed into view at the window. A hand, crowned with evil claws, slapped the glass and splintered it into cobwebs.

Big
. They were as big as men, Kirk realized, knowing that when regular
Weres
took to wolf form, their mass almost doubled. It appeared that the same happened to the horrors on the other side of the glass––perhaps even more.

Claws raked and gouged the wood while a face actually attempted to bite through the window. Not too bright, but they were learning how to use their new bodies, learning how damn powerful they were. Kirk remembered Borland tossing him around like a wet pillow. He placed his back firm against a wall and slumped to its base, taking grim stock of his situation, witnessed the door
bulge
from a single blow.

He couldn’t put it off any longer. He was hurting too badly.

With one last energizing breath, Kirk got to his feet, and staggered deeper inside the house.

Seconds later, a breed put its palm through the glass. A razor-sharp shard unzipped a deep line in its forearm as it withdrew for another strike. A cannonball blow finally split the wood down the middle, and a short, considering moment followed. One could sense the understanding of the besiegers, catching on to what they possessed. They were
stronger
than dogs now. More hands and even feet battered the door until bloody fists and heels burst through. They piled in, wrenching broken planks free. The door shuddered, tearing away from hinges. The storm penetrated the house.

Yelling cries of savagery and victory, the
Weres
entered the hall.

Kirk heard them come through. Heard the guitar-like whines and screams from the breeds as he felt broken bones shift. The dark floor of the washroom beckoned, the inky line where the bottom of the door grazed over the linoleum. Bones cracked. Eyes bulged. His jaw popped and unhinged, widened, then fastened tight. Power ripped through his back and when he arched it, vertebrae crackled like beach rocks in a cold surf. His senses exploded from a human’s to the heightened set of the werewolf. The change wrenched free an aftermath of a memory buried deep in his mind, never to be revisited. A fleeting ricochet of dialogue as painful as a bullet to the face, and for a shifting second, he saw
her
, saw her pleading face as she explained to him she couldn’t be his. Never be his. She wouldn’t be with a man in denial of what he was,
resisting
what he was.

Kirk’s own voice wailed in his head––he
wasn’t
a wolf, he
wasn’t
a––a flash of pain chewed the memory up and pulverized it into embers of nothing. He opened his glaring eyes, his mind settling in the ripple of the transformation. He always retained his mind, his sense of self, upon changing.

But he couldn’t suppress the urge––the
need––
to hurt something.

The breeds dug at the remains in the hall, sniffing and puzzling over their diminished sense of smell. Some stepped over their companions on the floor. One tripped and landed in a heap, drawing the scalding attention of the others. A burly, man-shaped
Were
dropped and ravenously licked the bones of one corpse while its companions gathered in the living room. The group, seven strong, kicked and grabbed things. One tall brute grabbed the sofa, lifted it and jammed it through the nearest window in a cascade of twinkling glass. A female reached the stairs to the second floor, caught a scent, and peered upward with villainous eyes. She called out, the sound like a raucous of bare nails across a chalkboard, and got the attention of the others.

Sniffing and stretching their jaws, they padded up the steps to the second floor.

A short hall possessed four doors. Three lay open. The last one, at the end of a soft carpet, was closed.

The smell grew stronger, even frightening. It was a musky scent, thick and dangerously mysterious, leaking from underneath the closed door. The
Weres
crowded into the cramped space and inched towards the end of the hall. Their growls rose in pitch, their weaponized fingers flexed. Heedless of whatever lurked behind the door, not one backed away. They’d recovered from their shock of the shotgun, felt empowered by the impressive strength of their new bodies. Felt invincible in their numbers. Their black eyes as bright as polished coal.

Any fear they might have had quickly evaporated, replaced by a desire to kill.

Tentatively, one reached out with a single finger, tipped with a knife-like talon.

Kirk sensed them right outside the bathroom. He felt better, infinitely stronger, but far from healed.

A long, penetrating scrape started near the top of the door, on the outside, and dragged itself to the floor. Though the sound might’ve frightened a lesser soul, it had no effect upon the Halifax warden. Not now.

Kirk bared fangs as long as spikes and growled.

Just before bursting through the door.

Kirk slammed a paw into the face of one
Were,
pushing its skull back with enough force to catch and splinter a nearby doorframe. The brutish werewolf surged forward, its jaws crushing the throat of a nearby female and ripping it out in a wet flash of blackness. The other figures, stunned by the ferocity of this new monster, drew back, stumbling over each other to escape. One with a jutting jaw screamed and grabbed the shoulders of the great beast, plunging its nails deep into meat. Kirk threw his weight into his attacker, snapped the claws off at their roots, and put jaws through a once-solid wall. The werewolf leaped, landing on the fleshy back of a man, and raked him to the bone. The breed shrieked, forced to the floor. Kirk stomped, pulverizing the head like a bad melon. The body snaked and twitched until Kirk got over him and kicked off with both hind legs, flinging the convulsing
Were
into a far wall hard enough to leave an impression.

But then the remaining breeds recovered. One with pallid skin slashed Kirk’s sensitive nose, almost tearing the tissue clean off his snout. Another jumped onto his back and drove both tooth and claw into his shoulders. Yet another grabbed for his head, stabbing claws into his neck, seeking to pull it clear of his torso like a stubborn cork.

The werewolf freaked.

Kirk rolled onto his back, crushing the ribs of the
Were
clinging to him in a burst of air and a crunching of bone. His rear legs came up, hooked and nearly ripped an entire arm from the attacker of his head, flinging the
Were
away in a note of rage. Kirk twisted onto his paws and plowed into the abdomen of the pale one, biting deep and tasting spine, buckling the breed in half while runnels of blood splashed to the carpet. The werewolf smashed the wilting ghost into a wall, three times in an eye blink, the final blow spiking the ragdoll through planks in a burst of splinters.

One breed fell over itself in its haste to retreat.

Kirk made to leap but something grabbed his tail and swung him into the wall, crumpling it, then the ceiling. Plaster rained down. The werewolf yowled and kicked, but the breed holding him––one with bulging eyes––stood just out of range. Eyes slammed Kirk into the floor with a
whump
, causing the wounded
Weres
to shiver where they lay. The breed jumped onto the sorcerous animal, biting for a jugular. Four wolfish paws caught the angry creature in midair and Kirk rolled Eyes into the wall hard enough to buckle wood. The Halifax warden twisted to gain the top of his recovering foe. The breed clawed and slashed, tearing explosive chunks out of the werewolf’s hide before realizing its mistake of leaving its neck unguarded––a split second before Kirk’s serrated jaws powered down on its throat, crushing the life from it. Kirk didn’t release the creature right away, but when he did, he did so with whatever power he possessed in his neck and shoulders, tearing upwards in a grisly shower.

With no one left to fight, Kirk slunk from one moaning
Were
to the other, killing each with a single bite, shredding throats. He took no chances, even tearing out the gullet of the one whose skull he squashed, not wanting to discover if the thing could regenerate its head or not. Kirk remembered tales of werewolves who’d been decapitated in battle. They
could
grow them back, but the mind was forever gone, replaced only by a monstrous desire to deliver death amongst all. He’d heard stories of the hunts to put down such a creature, frantic races where the werewolves had to kill the beast before the human herds discovered them, and hoped he’d never have to partake in one.

When he finished the last, sinking his teeth as well as his growl into the breed’s pallid skin, Kirk counted the dead.
Six
. He’d lost count in the fight but knew one had escaped. Not that it bothered him. He had more pressing concerns at hand. The holes and gashes the
Weres
had inflicted upon him throbbed and he licked each one with a whimper. His blood dripped upon carcasses while the blizzard approved with its own scream.

He stumbled into a nearby bedroom, feeling how the blood-saturated carpet squished beneath his paws. The battle rage faded. He crawled under the nearest bed and peeked out at the carnage left behind. Kirk knew he had a problem. The pack had crippled him even more, damning him from returning to a man. He needed to rest, for which he sensed there was no time. And he needed to feed. Food was critical if he were to heal.

Unfortunately for him, he’d collapsed only feet away from a huge supply of fresh, fragrant meat. The notion repelled him, eating the breeds, as much as feasting on humans ever did, but for a different reason. He didn’t like people, as they reminded him of what he once was. What he had. And despite the years and the changes, he still thought of himself as a person. One living on the outside, granted, but still a person. Unlike Morris, who seemed to revel in his
Were
abilities, his
Were
curse.

A wicked aroma clung to the broken, unmoving forms. Tantalizing. Sweet. He should have left the upstairs, but something primal inside stopped him, kept him right where he lay, smelling all of that moist nourishment. Lifesaving, in this case.

Don’t. Don’t do it. It wasn’t him. Wasn’t like him. He was––he was a
person
.
Trying
to be a person. Trying to be… and his argument collapsed when it arrived at
a good person
.

Kirk whined. His mouth flooded with saliva. When he took control of himself, he discovered he’d crawled
back
towards the horrifying banquet.

The meat’s tainted
, he reproached himself in a weakening daze. His stomach rumbled, knotted. His ruined nose couldn’t even keep out the now heady bouquet, blood sweet and thick.

Another short crawl, his resistance eroding by each punishing second. Agony. His body trembled, ached, bled. A voice grabbed his consciousness and whispered the one thing going to save him. The one
act
which would save the town. The people.

Kirk closed his eyes, knowing the truth of that low blow.

Sighing, he crawled another weary foot and prodded something with his muzzle.
Huffed
and whined one final time.

He didn’t see what he bit into.

The storm gathered itself up and laid into the solitary figure struggling through its white rage. Ross endured and arrived at the first house he had to check on and, he supposed, the people he had to get to safety.
Safety!
The notion seemed more incredible with every passing second. Seems like he’d hope someone would save the town for years, but from a different, less horrific, fate. Amherst Cove had been quietly dying for some time now, as its people either moved away or expired of natural causes, but Ross had held onto his life here for as long as he could. The little coastal town was his home, and part of him believed he’d die here. And even though he’d only just made the decision to move, he wasn’t going to abandon the townspeople this night.

And, God above grant him the strength, he’d do what he had to do to save every last one.

Ross hit the door with his fist, hammering the wood as if Lucifer’s own hand were about to close about the scruff of his neck. He strangled the shotgun in his right hand, the metal frosted by the elements.

The door opened, and the barely distinct shape of Doug Cook stuck his head out, half a foot over Ross’s.

“D’hell y’doin’ out hare?” Doug yelled into the breath of the storm, holding his door with one great mitt of a hand.

“Doug, it’s Ross Kelly.”

“Ross,” Doug declared, his tone softened by wonder. “D’hell y’doin’ out hare? Jesus, b’y, y’happen to see it’s snowin’ out?”

“Doug, let me in. Gotta talk to ya.”

“Jesus, yes, come in. Come in.”

“Who izzit, Dougie?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Ross Kelly.”

“He know der’s a snowstorm on?”

“Yes, Jesus, yes, he knows,” Doug bawled back and motioned his visitor to enter. A moment later, the door shut out the freezing wail, and Ross composed himself as best as he could without sounding like a lunatic.

“We got a problem, Doug,” he said, staring up into a face and form outlined by yellow light. In his sixties, Doug Cook was a giant in the bayside community. Deeper inside the house, his wife Dorothy held up a flashlight as if posing for a commercial. She was near as tall as Doug herself. Their male offspring was a behemoth, set to play pro basketball in the States.

“Wha’s that, my son?”

“You got a gun in the house?”

“Christ Jesus, yes.”

“Get it and get dressed. You got to leave here.”

That was met by a stunning clap of silence.

“D’hell y’talking about?”

“D’hell he talkin’ about, Dougie?” Dorothy echoed, coming down the hall with the flashlight raised like the mother of Nancy Drew.