Fool Moon (26 page)

I tried to match her smile, but my feelings were in too much turmoil. Pain, mostly. Physical pain, and a deeper heart hurt, both for Murphy’s sake and for the sake of our friendship. She was so alone. I wanted to go to the rescue, somehow, to make her hurting go away.

She’d have spit in my face if I’d tried. Murphy wasn’t the sort of person who wanted to be rescued, from anything. That she accepted as much comfort as my wet coat offered her came as a surprise to me.

I looked around the pit again intently. The other Alphas were recovering, enough to sit up, but apparently not enough to move. Tera just sat with her back against the wall, defeated and exhausted. Marcone swung from the platform high above me, not moving, though I thought I might have heard a moan from him at one point. I felt a pang of sympathy for him. However much of a heartless bastard he might be, no one deserved to dangle like bait from a hook.

The Alphas, Tera, Marcone, Murphy. They were all where they were because of me. It was my fault we were there, my doing that we were all about to die. Carmichael, the poor jerk, was dead, also because of me. So were other good cops. So was Hendricks.

I had to do something about it.

“I need to get out of here,” I told Murphy. “Get me out of here, and maybe I can do something.”

Murphy turned her head toward me. “You mean . . . ?” She waved the fingers of her unbroken arm in a vaguely mystic gesture.

I nodded. I still had my ace in the hole. “Something like that.”

“Right. So how do we get you out of here?”

“You going to trust me, Murph?”

Her jaw clenched. “It doesn’t look as though I have much choice, does it?”

I smiled back at her, and rose to my feet, sloshing around in the water. “Maybe we could dig into the walls a bit. Make climbing holes.”

“You’ll probably get shot once you get to the top,” Murphy said.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think they’ll want to hang around the pit with MacFinn coming. They’re bloodthirsty, but not stupid.”

“So,” Murphy said. “All we need to do is get you up to the top of the pit, and then you’re going to go one-on-four with a bunch of armed FBI agents-cum-werewolves and beat them in time to go up against the loup-garou that we couldn’t stop before with all of your magical gizmos and a building full of police officers.”

“Essentially,” I answered.

Murphy looked up at me and then shrugged and let out a short, defiant laugh. She stood up too, flicked her hair back from her eyes with a toss of her head, and said, “I guess it could be worse.”

There was a soft sound from above and behind me. Murphy froze, staring upward, her eyes becoming almost impossibly wide.

I turned my head very slowly.

The loup-garou crouched up at the lip of the pit, huge and gnarled and muscled and deadly. Its foaming jaws were open, showing the rows of killing teeth. Its eyes gleamed with scarlet flames in the moonlight, and they were fastened on the dangling figure of Gentleman Johnny Marcone. I quivered, and the motion made a slight sound against the water. The beast turned its head down, and when it saw me its eyes narrowed to glowing slits, and it let out a harsh, low growl. Its claws dug into the earth at the edges of the pit, tearing through it like sand.

It remembered me.

My heart started ripping a staccato rhythm in my chest. That same raw, sharp, primitive fear I’d felt before, the fear of simply being jumped on and
eaten,
returned in full force and for a moment swept away all thoughts and plans.

“You had to say that,” I said to Murphy, my voice wan and pale. “Happy? It’s worse.”

Chapter
Thirty-two

"O
kay,” I said, fear making my voice weak. "This is bad.

This is very, very bad.”

"Wish I had my pistol,” Murphy said, her tone resolute. "I wish we’d had some more time to talk things out, Harry.”

I glanced over at Tera. One of the Alphas, the mouse-haired girl in her wolf-shape, was leaning against her and whimpering. “Close your eyes,” Tera said softly and covered the little wolf’s eyes with her hand. Her amber eyes met mine, without hope, without any sparkle of life.

They were going to die because of me. Dammit all, it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t done anything grossly stupid. It wasn’t fair to have come so far, sacrificed so much, and to buy it down here in the mud, like some kind of burrowing bug. I searched the pit again desperately, but it was a fiendishly simple and complete trap. There were no options down here.

My eyes went up. Straight up.

“Marcone!” I shouted. “John Marcone! Can you hear me?”

The limp figure suspended above me stirred weakly. “What do you want, Mr. Dresden?”

“Can you move?” I asked. The loup-garou growled, low, and started pacing a circuit of the pit, glowing eyes flashing between us down at the bottom and Marcone, trying to decide who to rip apart first.

“An arm,” Marcone confirmed a few seconds later.

"Do you still keep that knife on you? The one I saw at the garage?”

“Denton and his associates searched me and found it, I am afraid,” came Marcone’s voice.

“Dammit all. You’re a miserable, stupid bastard for making a deal with Denton, Marcone. Now do you believe he wanted to kill you all along?”

The figure above me wiggled and writhed, swinging from the ropes that held him trussed up there. “Yes, do tell me that you told me so with your last breath, Mr. Dresden. I was already rather acutely aware of that,” Marcone said, his voice dry. “But perhaps I’ll yet have a chance to make amends.”

“What are you doing?” I asked. I kept my eyes on the loup-garou, as it circled the pit, and kept myself opposite the creature, where I could see it.

“Reaching for the knife they
didn’t
find,” Marcone replied. He grunted, and then I saw a flicker of light on something shiny up above me.

“Forget it,” Murphy said quietly, stepping close to my side as she watched Marcone. “He’s just going to cut himself loose and leave us to rot here.”

“We won’t get the chance to rot,” I pointed out. But I thought she was right.

Marcone started to spin slowly on his rope, wriggling around until his whole body was rotating on the end of it. He began to speak, his voice calm. “Ironic, isn’t it? I’d planned to wait for the creature on the platform and tempt it into the pit. There are some nets ready to drop on it, after that. I would have held it until morning.”

“You do know that it’s right beneath you now, don’t you, John?” I asked.

“Mr. Dresden,” Marcone said crossly. “I’ve asked you not to call me that.”

“Whatever,” I said, but I had to admire the raw courage of the man to banter while dangling up there like a ripe peach.

“I use this place to conduct noisy business,” Marcone said. “The trees muffle the sound, you see. You can barely hear even shotgun blasts on the other side of the wall.” He continued to spin on the rope, slow and lazy, a shadow against the moon and the stars.

“Well. That’s nice,” I said, “and despicable.” The loup-garou looked down at me and snarled, and I took an involuntary step back from it. The mud wall of the pit stopped me.

“Oh, quite,” Marcone agreed. “But necessary.”

“Is there
anything
you’re not shameless about, Marcone?” I asked.

“Of course. But you don’t think I’m going to tell you, do you? Now, be quiet if you please. I don’t need the distraction.” And then I saw Marcone’s arm curl in and straighten outward. There was a flutter of metallic motion in the air, and a snapping sound from the base of on eof the ropes that held the platform suspended, at its far end where it was secured to one of the pine trees.

The rope abruptly sagged, and the platform—and Marcone with it—swayed drunkenly. Marcone grunted, and bounced against his ropes a few times, making the whole affair of ropes lurch about—and then the damaged line snapped and came entirely free. It whipped out toward Marcone, lost momentum, and then fell through the evening air.

Straight down into the pit in front of me. One end was still attached to the platform above, now off center from the pit and listing to one side.

I blinked at it for a moment, and Murphy said, “Holy shit. He did it.”

“I don’t recommend waiting about, Mr. Dresden,” Marcone said. I saw him twist his head to look at the loup-garou, and tense up as the beast trotted around the edge of the pit to the side closest to him. If it had noticed the rope that had fallen down from above, it gave no sign.

Hope lurched in my chest like sudden thunder. I grabbed on to the rope with both hands and started shinnying up it like a monkey, pushing with my legs and using mostly my good arm to hang on with while I lifted my legs up higher for another grip.

I got up to even with the lip of the pit and started rocking the rope back and forth, getting a swinging momentum going so that I could leap off the rope and to the ground outside the pit. The ropes above creaked dangerously as I did, and Marcone swayed back and forth, still spinning about gently.

“Dresden,” he shouted. “Look out!”

I had been intent on my escape, and given the loup-garou no thought. I turned my head around to see it flying through the air toward me. I could see its gleaming eyes and felt sure that I could have counted its teeth if I had waited around for it. I didn’t. I let out a yelp and let go of the rope, dropping several feet straight down before clamping on to it again. The loup-garou sailed past me overhead like some huge, obscenely graceful bat, and landed on the far side of the pit with barely a sound.

My fingers felt weak, I was so shocked and terrified, but I started hauling my way up again, swinging desperately as I went. The loup-garou turned and focused its eyes on me again, but Marcone let out a sharp whistle, and the thing turned toward him, pricking its misshapen ears forward in a weirdly doggy mannerism, before it snarled and leapt upward. I bounced on the rope, and Marcone bobbed down and then back up again. The loup-garou missed him by bare inches, I think, but I didn’t hang around to watch. I let out a yell and threw myself at the edge of the pit as the rope reached the apex of its swing.

I missed, my belly hitting the lip of the pit, but I started clawing at the earth and kept myself from falling. I strained and kicked, thrashing and whimpering in desperation, and managed to gain a few inches, slowly worming my way up onto the ground, until I got my feet underneath me. The loup-garou, on the far side of the pit, turned toward me and let out a sound that can best be described as a furious roar. Shouts erupted from elsewhere in the estate—Denton and his lackeys must have been watching the pit, I thought, but they were the second scariest bad guys on the field at the moment. I had bigger things on my mind.

Said thing threw itself at me, and I had a few seconds to start running, trying to arrange things so that the pit would be between me and it when it landed. I was only partly successful. The loup-garou tore up the earth where I had been standing when it came down, and turned toward me again, facing me across a scant ten feet of space, from one side of the square pit to the side adjacent to it.

The rope started bobbing again, and then with a motion full of grace and power, Tera swung up out of the pit and landed in a crouch on the ground beside me.

“Go, wizard,” she snarled. “Denton and the others will kill us all if they are not stopped. I will handle MacFinn.”

“No way,” I said. “You can’t possibly take him on.”

“I know him,” she responded. And then there was, in her place, the huge she-wolf, dark fur peppered with grey. She snarled and bounded at the loup-garou and it reared up like a cat about to take a mouse, plunging toward her with abrupt speed.

And that’s when I saw the difference between Tera and the Alphas, Tera and Denton’s
Hexenwulfen,
even Tera and the loup-garou. Where they were fast, Tera was fast
and
graceful. Where they were quick, Tera was quick
and
elegant. She made them look like amateurs. She was something more primal, more in tune with the wild than they would ever be.

As the loup-garou threw itself at her, she slipped to one side like wind, threw her shoulder beneath the beast’s planted forepaw, and shouldered it off-balance, making it stumble. It recovered and spun toward her, but she was already gone, farther away from the pit, growling defiance at the supernatural creature. It followed, impervious and snarling with rage.

I heard a gunshot, and a bullet smacked into one of the trees behind me. Benn’s voice repeated a low, frantic chant, and then I heard her words turn into an animal’s snarls. Denton and the others were coming. It was time to play the last option I had, the one I hadn’t wanted to be forced to use. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did, but there wasn’t much choice.

I slipped my hand beneath my shirt and touched the wolf belt I’d taken from Agent Harris in the alley behind the Full Moon Garage.

It was vibrating beneath my fingers, warm to the touch, alive in its own fashion, and full of the power and strength that had been channeled into it. I closed my eyes and let that dark, wild power spill into me, mingle with all the fear and pain and weariness inside of me. It was easy. It was easier than any magic I’d ever done, leaping into me with a sort of hungry eagerness, seeping into me, making pain and fatigue and fear vanish and replacing it with nothing but strength, ferocity.

Power.

“Lupus,”
I whispered.
“Lupus, lupara, luperoso.”

It took no more of a chant than that for the change to take me. It wasn’t something that I noticed, really. But when I opened my eyes again, things were simply as they should be,
right
in a way so fundamentally profound that I wondered why I had never noticed its lack before.

My vision was sharp and clear enough to count the hairs on the head of the she-wolf orienting on me a few feet away. I could hear the pounding of her heart, the restless motion of the wind, the heavy breaths of the other agents in the trees, moving toward me like great, clumsy cows. If the sun had suddenly risen into the sky, I could not have seen any more clearly than I did, all in glorious shades of blue and green and maroon and purple, as though God had dipped his brush into a late summer twilight and replaced all the darkness with those colors.

I dropped open my mouth in a silent laugh and felt my tongue glide over the gleaming, sharp tips of my fangs. What a beautiful night. I could smell blood on the air, hear the eagerness of my enemies to kill, and I felt that same hunger rising from my own heart and surging through me. It was perfect.

Benn came through the trees first, fast and powerful, but clumsy and impatient and stupid. I could smell her excitement, pitched to an almost sexual level. She was expecting an easy kill, a sudden rush over one of the slow, graceless two-legs and then the hot, spurting blood, the frenzied writhing. I did not oblige her. As she came through the trees, I leapt forward and was at her throat before she even realized I was there. A quick rip, hot blood, and she yelped in agony and fear, throwing herself to one side.

Stupid bitch. I’d missed the heart’s blood, but she was badly hurt. Two snaps severed her hamstrings as she tried to flee and left her writhing on the ground, helpless and terrified. I felt my body thrill with abrupt and vicious excitement. The bitch was mine now. She would live or die as I wished.

The surge of power and elation that flew through me at that realization could have carried me off the earth and to the silver glory of the moon and stars themselves. To the victor go the spoils. Her blood, her life, was mine to take and that was exactly how it
should
be. I stalked forward to finish her, as was only proper.

There was a puff of breath, and then Wilson, in his wolf-form, came hurtling from the woods. I slipped aside easily as he rushed by. The wounded Benn snarled and snapped blindly at him. Wilson turned on her, his fury out of control, and latched his jaws onto her throat. Blood was a black, rich, heady smell in the moonlight, and I swayed, drunk on the aroma of it. My mouth watered, jaws growing damp with saliva, as I smelled the bitch’s blood, and I wanted to fling myself at her, tear her apart myself as she went screaming to her death.

“Those wolves!” screamed Harris. “They got out! They got Benn!” He came plunging out of the trees, gun at the ready, his nearly useless eyes wide and staring and panicked. He started shooting at Wilson, who released the dead Benn’s throat. The first bullet smashed his left front paw to pulp. The second and third slugs hammered into his chest, and Wilson-wolf staggered to one side, yelping in sudden agony. He twisted and strained as he went down, paws scrabbling at his own stomach, until there was abruptly a balding, overweight man lying on the earth beside the dead wolf, his jacket open, his shirt unbuttoned to show the unfastened wolf belt. There was blood all over Wilson, bubbling out of his mouth.

“Holy . . .” Harris breathed, pacing closer, his gun held up, until he could see what he had done. “George? Oh, God. Oh, God, I thought you were one of them. What the hell . . .”

Agent Wilson didn’t answer the redheaded kid. He simply drew his gun from his jacket and started shooting.

In their human forms, they couldn’t see each other very well in the dark, I thought. They both started shooting at the muzzle flashes. More blood flooded the air, along with the sharp, acrid smell of burning gunpowder. Both men went down, bleeding out onto the earth, and I felt my jaws open in another smile, on another sense of warm satisfaction. Idiots. Who did they think they were dealing with here? They’d been making my life miserable, and the lives of others, and now they had gotten their just deserts. It would have been better had I torn out their throats myself, admittedly.