Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (26 page)

Her snout was soaked red from his blood. It flowed freely from his wounds, and he was bent over, hurt and vulnerable now. But he was free.

“I don’t have time for this,” he snarled at her. “Let me pass and you’ll live long enough to get out of here.”

The female’s feral eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so. Dallas told me to keep you here. He didn’t want to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. You’re half-dead already.”

Blood dripped onto the hardwood floor. Valerie lunged toward him and he met her halfway, clawing a long gash in her abdomen as with his other hand he began to choke her. Together they crashed into a bookcase against the wall and then went down, snapping at each other.

Bill was blind to all but the scent of her blood now; the instincts of the Prowler had overwhelmed him. Yet somewhere in the back of his mind, he still knew what he was fighting for.

Courtney.

Castillo was just about to knock when he heard the crash of breaking furniture from the second floor. Through the open window above him came snarls and grunts of pain, of animals fighting.

Animals.
But he knew what it was. What they were.

He glanced once over his shoulder at his car. Inside was a radio he could have used to call for backup, but how many cops would hear the call? How many would respond? He had his cell phone in his pocket, but there was no way to know if he’d get Lieutenant Boggs right away and he didn’t have time to wait.

With a muttered curse, he drew his service weapon, held the gun out to one side, hauled back, and kicked at the door. Wood cracked and splintered, but it took three kicks before the frame shattered and the door swung in. He rushed into the dimly lit foyer, gun held tightly in both hands now as he swept it around, searching with eyes and weapon both. Just because the sounds of violence had come from above did not mean the place was otherwise empty. Loud voices and the sound of gunfire came to him from a nearby room, but he recognized the flat noise as false immediately. Television.

Another crash came from above, followed by a bestial scream of pain. Castillo raced to the stairs, still alert for signs of anyone else on the first floor. But then the first floor was forgotten. He took the steps two at a time. At the top, in a tastefully decorated hall with antique paintings on the walls and an expensive narrow carpet running the floor beneath him, he spun around again, searching for anyone else.

Nothing.

The sounds came from a room up to his right, the second door. Castillo hustled down the hall, gun held up now. As he reached the room, he put his back to the wall outside the door and paused for a single moment. Then he spun and stepped into the room, taking aim.

A lithe, black-furred female Prowler dressed in tattered clothes faced off against a much larger male. Bloody gashes covered both of their bodies. The male roared and bared his crimson-stained fangs, but he looked tired, unsteady.

The female saw the opening and with a swiftness that belied her injuries, she lunged at the other.

Had they been human, Castillo would have had to call out some warning, to identify himself.

But they weren’t human. They were monsters.

He raised the gun in both hands and took aim.

Wary, numb now, Bill knew he was slowing down. He glared at Valerie and waited for an opening. If he could not find one, she would kill him. He was too weak, too tired, and she had the advantage. As they fought he had watched her, seen her savagery, and he thought he knew what it would take. Prowlers they both were, but Valerie was lost in what she was, in claw and fang, and Bill had given himself over to that for a time, but now he knew he needed to think like a man again.

When she lunged for him, she came with both hands up, claws ready to slash, fast and deadly. Bill ducked and turned halfway around, took her attack on his shoulder and back, claws slicing deep. Then he balled his own taloned hands into fists and he struck her across the face hard enough to knock her backward. He moved in and hit her again, fighting like a barroom brawler now instead of one of his kind.

Valerie reeled. She pulled herself up, teeth gnashing, and readied to lunge at him again.

There came a sudden loud report, a gunshot, and a bullet tore through her head, erupting from the side of her skull with a spray of blood and fur. Bill whipped around to see Jace Castillo standing in the doorway of the room, weapon leveled at him. In the bloodlust and heat of the fight he had not caught the man’s scent. Now his heart pounded even faster in his chest, and he knew that in an eyeblink the cop would fire again.

Bill dodged.

Castillo fired and the bullet shattered a window behind him.

As Valerie’s corpse fell to the ground he caught her, held her up in front of him, a shield of dead flesh.

“Wait!” Bill snarled. “Castillo, don’t shoot!”

The detective fired again, the bullet tearing into Valerie’s corpse with enough impact that Bill took a step back.

“Wait, dammit!”

Castillo took aim again, but hesitated. “How do you know my name?”

Bill took two long breaths, tried to shake off his pain, and willed the change. Bones shifted painfully, his jaw clicked as it reset itself, fur withdrew into flesh and new skin formed over it.

“Don’t shoot,” Bill said again, his voice and his face human again.

The detective stared at him, eyes wide and mouth open in astonishment.

“Cantwell,” he whispered. “Jesus, you’re one of them.”

Bill let Valerie’s corpse drop to the floor and held his hands up as though he were being arrested.

“It’s more complicated than that.”

Castillo scowled. “How complicated can it be? That guy in the trunk, all the times you animals tried to kill people at that pub—”

“But they’re still alive,” Bill argued. “I sleep in Courtney’s bed every other night. If I wanted them dead—”

“So, what? You’re a
good
monster?” the detective asked, incredulous. His aim never wavered.

“If you want to put it that way. Just think about it. How do you think they’ve stayed alive this long? They had help, Castillo. We’re not all killers. If you shoot me, they’re all dead. Courtney, Jack, Molly, who knows how many others at the pub. Look at this!” he said, holding up his left hand to show the detective the shackle still locked around his wrist. “They got the drop on me with a taser, dragged me back here so I’d be out of the way.”

“Why didn’t they just kill you?” Castillo demanded.

“It’s a long story,” Bill replied.

He could see the hesitation in the cop’s eyes. Castillo thought of him as a monster, a bloodthirsty beast, and he could not blame the man. That was all he had ever known of Prowlers. But there was nothing more to be said. He was either going to shoot or not. Bill waited and held his breath.

After a few moments, Castillo relaxed his grip on the gun and lowered it slightly, though he kept it aimed at Bill.

“I’m listening.”

Quickly, Bill told him about Dallas and Valerie, about the contract on Jack and Molly and Courtney. Even as he spoke he could see in the cop’s expression that it was making sense to him, pieces of a puzzle falling into place. When he was through, Castillo lowered the gun.

“Courtney called earlier. I went by your place,” the detective said. “Maybe I’ll pay for it, but I believe you. I’ll phone it in, and we’ll have a dozen men there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty—”

“It’s got to be handled by cops who already know. Those are the orders I’ve got on this. No one knows about the . . . about you . . . who doesn’t have to.”

Bill swore. “Not good enough. I can be there myself in twenty minutes. Besides, if you send a bunch of guys in with guns, that won’t stop Dallas from doing the job. He’s got a reputation he’s willing to die for. I’ll go. I can do it quieter and faster and maybe keep everyone alive.” Castillo paused a moment, then nodded. “I just hope you’re not too late. I’ve got to stay until a cleanup team arrives.” He pulled out his cellular phone. “Here. Call and warn them. Maybe if they’re ready for him he won’t do anything.”

“I’ll call on the way.”

As he took the phone and passed by the detective, Castillo flinched.

Bill looked at him. “Thank you.”

Castillo nodded. He did not speak until Bill was already in the hall. “Cantwell? You could have rushed me with that dead thing in your hands, used her as a shield, probably killed me, right?”

Bill frowned. “Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you? I thought you were all . . .”

“Animals,” Bill finished for him. “A conversation for another day. I owe you that much.”

Then he ran for the stairs. When he rushed through the door and leaped down the front steps to the walk, the sky was fully dark above, the night laden with diamond pinpricks. It was late now. And a tiny part of him knew with utmost certainty that it was
too
late.

Eden was little more than a ghost to him now.

Jack stared at her, this gray silhouette of a person, like a photographic negative. As often as he had shifted his perception to look into the Ghostlands, he doubted he would ever be used to seeing living, breathing people look like this. Like ghosts. When Eden moved there was a kind of blurring effect around her as though he were seeing her through some kind of strobe light.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice far away.

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just . . . always a little freaky.”

“I believe it,” Eden replied.

The kitchen was jammed with phantoms, souls of the dead, mostly victims of the Prowlers, who had come to help if they could. Jack saw them all now, three-dimensional, solid as the chair beneath him. And yet if he tried to touch them . . . nothing but a chill. Somehow, though, that did not happen with the Ravenous. He could touch it, and it could touch him.

Artie stood with Corinne Berdinka, whose ghost wore the nurse’s uniform in which she had been murdered. Gray-haired Father Pinsky was behind her, along with an elderly black couple he had also seen before and a dozen others. The only other soul he recognized was that of Alan Vance, a deputy sheriff from Vermont who had been killed by Prowlers there. Jack had tried to speak to Vance’s spirit, but the specter had only stared at him and then looked away. He didn’t press the issue.

The thing that unnerved Jack the most, though, was Seth. Though Jack had now focused his vision so that he could see into the Ghostlands, as if he himself were dead and lost, Seth looked the same to him. Brilliant, blazing light in the shape of a man. He wanted to ask why that was, if Seth had existed so long that he had forgotten what he looked like, if this was the only image his consciousness could conjure.

But this was not the time for more questions.

The room shimmered with fear and anxiety. The dead were mostly silent, waiting, wary. Artie had told them all what happened in Newburyport, that the Ravenous would be able to sense Jack now. That it would come for him, try to tear his spirit apart, to consume him.

“So . . . what do we do now?” Eden asked. “I . . . I’m kind of afraid, Jack.”

He hated hearing that quaver in her voice. The truth was, Eden was only there because where she went, Seth followed, but he probably should have sent her on her way once Seth had shown himself. Not that Eden would have gone even if he suggested it.

“You’ll be all right,” he told her.

“It isn’t me I’m afraid for.”

Jealousy.

Molly was horrified to find it in her heart. From the moment she had seen Eden, a tension insinuated itself in her, like violin strings drawn too tightly. As she took orders, went about her work, hustled trays to impatient customers, she felt as though her cheeks were flushed red from embarrassment. Not that anyone would know how she felt, yet still it was as though they could read her mind and see how silly it all was.

Silly. Or is it?

She stopped in the middle of the floor, a tray of drinks for table eighteen in her hands, and sighed. Eden was beautiful, doe-eyed and possessed of a kind of effervescence, an inner glow that radiated from her, marked her as something special.

Molly was jealous.

“Crap,” she whispered.

Her gaze ticked toward the stairs leading up to the apartment. She knew that they were up there together, summoning ghosts or whatever, trying to find and deal with the Ravenous. Jack had been more worried than he ought to be, like he was hiding something from her, as though there were some danger to him or to all of them that he did not want to reveal.
And if all of that’s going on upstairs,
she wondered,
why am I
down here?

Her eyes drifted across the restaurant and settled upon table eighteen, and she suddenly remembered the tray in her hands. Hurriedly, she brought the women at that table their drinks, a smirk on her face. Not of amusement, but of amazement.

What the hell are you thinking, Molly Hatcher?

As she walked away from the table, she did not head back toward the kitchen, nor did she move to take an order from a party that had been seated a few minutes before. Instead, she walked to the bottom of the steps and started up.

Dallas forked the last bite of his steak into his mouth and watched Molly go up the stairs. With a small grin he lifted the cloth napkin from his lap and wiped his lips, then glanced down at his plate. The vegetables were untouched but he had eaten most of the potatoes that had come with his porterhouse, and the meat had been rare and tender. Exceptional.

It was going to be a shame to slaughter the people who ran this place. Bridget’s would likely shut down afterward, and that would be a crime. It wasn’t easy to find a place that cooked a porterhouse just the way he liked it.

Dallas took a sip of water and put the glass down on the oak table amid multiple rings of condensation. Ice clinked. He glanced up at the stairs again and saw Molly disappear inside the apartment, shutting the door behind her. Then he stood and walked toward the back of the restaurant without glancing up at the stairs again. He moved as though he were going to the rest room, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes. In that way, he was invisible to them, for most people, he had found, tended not to pay any attention to someone on their way to the rest room, as though it might be rude.