The Wolfman

A Chance in Hell . . .

“Please,” Ben whispered. Let there be a chance. He turned back to find his way.

And
it
was there. He slammed into it and rebounded.

With an awful realization he knew that it had circled him. Not hunting . . .
taunting
him. Playing with him.

The thing moved with hideous speed and Ben felt lines of fire ignite along his cheek. Hot blood poured from the gashes and ran into his mouth and down the side of his throat.

Ben whirled and ran straight through the dense brush.

His legs were as heavy as iron weights but he willed his feet to move. Out of the tangles of withered grass a set of pale stone steps rose to the foot of a massive door.

Ben realized where he was. It was a mausoleum carved into the living rock of the cliff. The ponderous bronze door was bound with thick iron bands that ran from top to bottom and side to side. The panels between the intersecting bands were inscribed with complex prayers and spells.

Hope flared like a spark in the darkness of his mind and he raced toward it. In the woods behind him he could hear the thing as it smashed through the brush in pursuit. He lifted the ten-thousand-pound weight of one foot onto the first step, but when he tried to lift the other he simply could not. With a cry of pain and defeat he collapsed.

Even so, Ben Talbot did not give up. The door stood ajar. If he could only reach it, then he could haul himself inside and slam it. That great door would hold back Hell itself.

Then he heard the click and scratch of clawed feet on the stone steps, and he knew that he would never reach that door. Ben’s numb fingers scrabbled for his knife but the thing loomed up huge and terrible over him and the knife clattered to the cold stone.

OTHER BOOKS BY JONATHAN MABERRY

Ghost Road Blues
Dead Man’s Song
Bad Moon Rising
Patient Zero
The Dragon Factory
(forthcoming)

A Novelization by
Jonathan Maberry

Based on the motion picture screenplay by
Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self
and the motion picture screenplay by
Curt Siodmak

A Tom Doherty Associates Book
NEW YORK

A Note to Parents: Please consult
www.filmratings.com
for information regarding movie ratings in making choices for children.

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE WOLFMAN

Copyright © 2010 by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP

The Wolfman is a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios. Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP. All Rights Reserved.

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-6516-3

First Edition: February 2010

Printed in the United States of America

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For Sara Jo

THE
WOLFMAN
™

T
he hunt is eternal.

Her hunger is eternal.

For four billion years she has hunted the night while the world below rolled and changed. The Goddess of the Hunt is pale and hungry, her wicked eye alert, her teeth ready to bite; her mouth aches for the taste of life flowing down her throat. The stars flee like sheep from her, and at the full flush of her power she rules the whole of the night sky.

At the new moon, when the Goddess of the Hunt sleeps, the flocks of stars return to their endless fields, each time thinking that the beast has gone. Each time unprepared for when she comes again, bright, shining and newly hungry, to hunt among them.

Eternally hungry.

Eternally hunting.

H
E STOPPED ON
a ridge that ran to the top of the cliff and looked up through the twisted fingers of the leafless trees at the sky. The clouds were thin and the night winds peeled them away in layers to reveal the moon—impossibly huge and bright, a cold white
face that ruled the sky. She was the only light in the sky; every star and planet had fled before the moon’s stern face.

Ben Talbot lingered on the ridge for a full minute, his lantern hanging from his fingers, his mouth open in a silent “oh.” He had seen the moon in a hundred forests, in distant fields far from cities, aboard ships lost in the vastness of the oceans—but every time he beheld her again in her fullness he was stunned to stillness. By her power . . . by her beauty.

Ben closed his eyes to force his wits to focus on the matter at hand. He wasn’t out here to gape at the sky, and as he came back to his purpose he felt a pang in his heart. With great trepidation he turned away, moving carefully past the spillway of a waterfall that roared down into a hidden pool, down the cracked rock of the ridge until he was at the foot of the cliff wall near the pool. He paused, looking first the way he’d come and then turned to pick out his path among the thick yews. The evergreens had long since won back the path, cracking paving stones with their indefatigable roots and spreading backward until they washed hard against the cliff wall. These trees were ancient, Ben knew, some of them planted by the Romans and still reaching up from the black soil to scratch at the roof of heaven. He held out his lantern, first in one direction and then another until he saw the path: a shadowy tunnel formed by the outstretched arms of the trees.

Ben nodded to himself. That had to be the right way, though it had been so long since he’d walked these woods that it seemed entirely new and alien. The way a boy sees the forest and the way a grown man remembers it are so different.

He moved forward, bending his tall body nearly in
half in order to enter the tunnel of branches; though within a few steps the roof of the tunnel rose in a gentle slope and Ben could straighten to his full height of six feet. He was not yet forty, fit, and every nerve and sense he possessed was attuned to the night around him. As a boy he and his brother had been out here a thousand times, but never in the dead of night. Perhaps it was the distortion of nighttime as much as the questionable integrity of memory that made this all feel unreal and unknown. With unsure steps and a fluttering heart he moved forward.

The corridor of yews paid out into a clearing and Ben stopped again to make sure he was going the right way. He began to raise his lantern for a better view—

Crash!

Something smashed through the dried bracken behind him. Ben spun and leaped to one side, his heart racing now, pounding on the walls of his chest. Something moved through the brush . . . invisible in the darkness.

What the hell was this?
Ben tensed to fight or run. One hand held the lantern out—as much a talisman as a light—and the other scrabbled at his belt for his knife. It was a sailor’s blade, six inches and sharpened to a wicked edge. As his fingers closed around it he felt a fragment of confidence fall back into place, but still the thing moved through the shadows.

Ben drew the blade slowly, keeping it behind him, not wanting the polished steel to catch light from the lantern.

It was closer.

The blade cleared the sheath and Ben eased slowly down into a crouch. If he had to fight, then he would make a real fight of it.

Closer still.

“Come on, you bugger,” he murmured, his fingers
flexing on the handle to find the best grip. If it rushed him he’d slash. Stabbing is a fool’s move, the blade gets caught. Ben knew that quick slashes could fend off even a big hound or a boar.

Suddenly the thing burst from the bushes and drove right toward him. Ben growled in fear and fury and raised his knife. The creature flew into the spill of lantern light and Ben fell back a step, a laugh escaping his chest.

It was a pheasant. Plump and beautiful and indifferent to the big man with the wicked knife. It flapped past him down the corridor of yews.

“Bloody hell!” Ben gasped and slammed the knife back into its sheath. “Bloody bird,” he called after it, and then to himself, “Bloody fool.”