Wild Blood (10 page)

Father and son moved even deeper into the woods, following the trail left by the white-tail. Skinner's heart hammered at his rib cage like it wanted to get out. He'd never stalked anything with the intent of killing it before. Over the years he had become quite adept at tracking squirrels and feral cats during his solitary trips to the woods, but he'd never done anything once he located them besides look at them.

They caught up with their quarry an hour later. The deer had paused to drink from a creek in a part of the woods where the trees were so close together the forest floor seemed cast in perpetual twilight. Skinner stood and stared in awe at the creature as it drank. It was a large, healthy buck, boasting an eight-point rack and a pelt the color of caramel apples.

“Go ahead, Skin. Take your aim,” his father whispered. “Just remember what I told you: squeeze the trigger, don't pull. You want to make sure you get 'im with the first shot, so he doesn't run off into the woods.”

As if in a trance Skinner raised his rifle, sighting down the barrel at the deer standing fifty feet away upwind of him. The buck lifted its head suddenly, water dripping from its wide black nose, and for a heartbeat Skinner feared it had caught his scent and was about bound into the surrounding forest, its white tail lifted in warning to its fellows.

The bullet from his rifle punched into the buck's exposed throat, causing it to jerk backward, and its forelegs flailing as its lifeblood pumped from the wound in its neck. The deer collapsed among the dead leaves with a heavy thump, its body shuddering like a clockwork toy whose action has wound down.

Skinner's father clapped him on the shoulder. “That's my boy! You're a natural born hunter, son! Now, let's put the poor beast down.…”

The buck had stopped struggling, but was still alive as, its ribcage rising and falling like a faulty bellows. As they stood beside the dying animal, William Cade handed his son his folding lock-back knife.

“Here you go, Skin. Finish what you started.”

The deer's eyes were already beginning to glaze as Skinner squatted beside it. His father's knife looked like a bayonet in his young hand. Without knowing why, he placed his free hand atop the dying animal's snout and stroked it gently. “Thank you,” he whispered as he slit the deer's throat. Skinner then stood up and handed the knife back to his father.

William Cade squatted beside the deer and began sawing away at its under- belly. “Look at this booger! He must weigh hundred-twenty, hundred-thirty pound, and dressed-out proper! We'll be eatin' venison all the way to Easter! And those points are gonna make one hell of a trophy, son!” With that, he reached into the animal's steaming carcass and pulled out a length of intestine. He then stood up and motioned for Skinner to draw near.

“That was a damn fine first kill, Skin,” he said proudly as he looped the slippery length of gut about the boy's neck and smeared his cheeks with blood. “I've known men twice your age who couldn't shoot that clean.”

The Change was on Skinner so fast there was no time for him to realize what was happening. All he knew was that that he was suddenly gripped by a pain that went beyond the ability to be expressed by word or thought. It was like he was dying and being born at the same time. And along with the pain was an overpowering hunger that made his stomach feel like an empty bag. After that was darkness, save for the blood and screams and the tearing of flesh, and the vague memory of running low to the ground at speeds impossible for a boy crawling on his hands and knees.

The next thing he knew, he was lying curled up naked on a pile of dead leaves, his knees pressed against his chest. He was covered in dried mud and was gnawing on what remained of a squirrel.

“Skinner? It's Mama. Can you hear me?” Somehow his mother was there, kneeling beside him. There were tears in her eyes and her face had suddenly become old and colorless. She removed her coat and wrapped it around his shivering form as she wrenched the half-eaten squirrel from his gore-caked hands. “We've got to get you back to the house before someone sees you.”

He lay in bed for the next three days with a raging fever, barely recovering in time for his father's funeral. When he awoke, he had no memory of what had happened. His mother insisted that he'd fallen ill on the first day of deer season and had not accompanied his father into the woods. And for eight years, he had believed her …

Skinner woke up naked and shivering, curled in the fetal position. Someone was shaking him and asking him if he was okay. For a brief moment, he thought it was his mother. Then he recognized the voice.

“Skinner! Answer me! Are you okay?”

Skinner slowly raised his head to find Creighton kneeling over him. He heaved a sigh of relief: it had all been a bad dream all along. He looked around, expecting to be greeted by Los Lobos' gray walls, but only saw open desert and sky instead.

“Man, I thought I'd never catch up with you!” Creighton exclaimed.

Real. It was all real.

The realization struck Skinner like a closed fist. The attack in the showers, the rape, the transformation, the killing—it had all actually happened. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a choked: “Ah. Ah. Ah.”

“You all right, kid?” Creighton asked. “You don't look so good.”

Skinner's reply was to noisily spewing forth the contents of his gut. Creighton nudged at the mess with his boot, and then bent over to retrieve a human finger.

“You feel better now?” he asked as he wiped off the severed digit, removed the ring affixed to it.

“How the hell am I ever supposed to ‘feel better'?” Skinner sputtered in disbelief. “I'm a murderer and a cannibal! I'm a monster!”

“You're being too hard on yourself. Way I see it, you're a damn miracle. C'mon, Skin. We gotta get you some clothes before you catch your death. Then we gotta snag ourselves some wheels. They're gonna be out lookin' for all the chickens that flew the coop last night, if they ain't already.”

“Let 'em find me, then.”

“You don't want that, kid.”

“You have no idea what the fuck I do and don't wannnn—!” Before Skinner could finish he was overcome by another wave of nausea, doubling over with each racking heave.

Creighton merely shook his head and picked up his friend as it he was a recalcitrant toddler to bed. “I don't pretend to know everything, Skinner. But I'm pretty damn sure I know what's better for you than you do, right now.”

Chapter Eleven

Dawn had yet to break as the pair of vans came to a halt at the foot of Bulldog Mesa, five miles south of Tucumcari. Before the dust had a chance to settle, the doors flew open and several figures piled out. The minivan's sound system shattered the early morning silence with Cradle of Filth. Ripper, relieved to be free of the confines of the vehicle, danced in a circle in time with the music, yipping at the retreating moon. He kicked up clouds of dust with his scuffed combat boots and then threw himself onto the ground and rolled around in the dirt. Being the youngest member of the pack, he tended to be the most enthusiastic.

Hew leaned against the side of the microbus, sipping beer from a forty-ounce bottle as he watched the drummer leap and jump about. Meanwhile, Sunder prowled the perimeter cautiously sniffing the wind, while Jag and Rend walked around to the cargo area.

Jez slowly stretched, her arms lifted high over her head, and made sure her traveling companions saw her exposed midriff. “Any sign of intruders?”

“I caught scent of a couple of coyotes and a puma, that's about it,” Sunder replied.

“Coyotes?” Jez frowned. “Are you sure about that?”

“I know true coyote when I smell it,” Sunder spat.

“I'm not saying you don't, my pet. It's just that—well, we are in the heart of enemy territory. We can't be too careful … not after what happened to poor Growler back in Los Angeles. Isn't that right?” she asked, fixing him with a hard, golden stare.

Sunder grunted and rolled his shoulders in a surly shrug, but did not meet Jez's gaze.

“Stop squabbling and get ready!” Jag barked, tossing his hair out of his face with an angry shake of his head. “We've still got to make that sound check in Albuquerque!”

“Yes, brother dear,” Jez replied with a roll of her eyes.

Jag fished the keys to the back of the microbus from his hip pocket and unlocked the side doors. Rend crawled inside and a second later a man and woman, their hands cuffed behind their backs, were unceremoniously dumped onto the hard dirt.

Jag squatted on his haunches and smirked as the prey struggled to roll over. “What's the matter, Perry? Are my little restraining devices a bit too real for you?”

The captive man tried to roll onto his back, but Jag put his boot on his neck and forced his face back into the dust.

Perry spat dirt from his mouth and glared up at the musician looming over him. “What's this mind-fuck control shit you're trying to pull, huh, Jag? You said you and your weirdo sister wanted to play doubles. You didn't say nothing about bondage and a gang-bang!”

“Hey, you're the one who came backstage in Amarillo,” Jag reminded him with a sneer. “You said you were into rough trade. Well, they don't get any rougher'n me and my running buddies!”

“Let me go, asshole!”

“Don't say anything else, Perry,” the woman pleaded. She was a bottle blonde in a black party dress that had lost her high-heels while gaining a nasty welt under her right eye. “He's crazy. They're all crazy.”

“Shut up, Sheri!” Perry hissed, somehow making it seem like the whole situation was her fault.

Jag knelt down and thrust his face into that of the terrified woman. “Crazy? Sweetheart, we're a lot more complicated than that!” Rend tossed him a set of keys, which Jag caught in midair without even looking. “We're not drug-crazed psycho-killers; we're sporting types. And there's no sport to be found in shooting fish in a barrel. So we're going to give you two a fighting chance. We're going to set you free and give you and Perry here a nice, long five minute start,” Jag explained as he quickly removed the handcuffs and stepped away.

The captives sat up, exchanging uneasy looks as they massaged the circulation back into their wrists.

“Don't just sit there. The clock is ticking,” Jag grinned, exposing far too many teeth for a human mouth.

Sheri scuttled backward on her heels and hands as Rend made a noise somewhere between agony and orgasm and dropped onto his knees, his spine twisting and bunching underneath his leather jacket. Perry lurched to his feet and grabbed Sheri by the wrist, dragging her behind him as he ran into the darkness.

Ripper whined in anticipation of the hunt, hopping about on one foot, then the other, as he took off his boots. Sunder unbuckled the bondage straps that basically held his jeans together and joined Ripper in his dance, his penis growing rigid as he shifted. Hew tossed back his head as the Change came over him and gave voice to a lusty howl of exultant pain. Jez cried out as well, whipping her head back and forth as her bones restructured themselves, her shrieks quickly turning into a yowl of release.

Jag shook out his cream-colored mane and leapt atop a nearby boulder. He was happy with the way the pack was working out. They might have their differences in human form, but once they shifted into their true skins the petty annoyances disappeared and they became a tightly-knit, fiercely loyal team.

And he was the leader of the pack.

“Come on, damn it! They'll be after us in a minute!” Perry snapped.

They were halfway up the side of a low hill, the face of which was studded with scrub and small outcroppings. Sheri leaned against one of the larger rocks, sobbing in pain. She wiped at her tears, smearing her mascara across her cheeks.

“What are they?”

“They're not a black-metal band, that's for fuckin' certain!” he replied. “Now hurry up!”

“I can't! Look at my feet!”

He didn't have to as he'd seen the bloody footprints a quarter-mile back, and he had no doubt whatever was pursuing them had noticed them as well. Even if they somehow managed to survive their ordeal, Sheri would be crippled for life.

“So what do you expect me to do? Carry you?” he snapped.

She stared up at him with those big, stupid Bambi eyes of hers and began to whimper. Fine. He never asked her to fall in love with him in the first place.

“Forget it!” he spat as he resumed his climb, scrabbling over the loose soil and gravel. “I'm not lugging you through the fucking foothills!”

Sheri stared after him, open-mouthed. “That's not funny, Perry! Come back!”

Perry paused to shoot her a venomous glance over his shoulder. “I mean it, bitch! You're on your own! I told you when we met I wasn't into commitment! Nice knowin' you, kid!”

“Perry!” She tried to follow him, but the soles of her feet had been reduced to raw hamburger. After a couple of agonizing steps she fell and lay there in the dirt, weeping his name.

Fuck her, Perry thought grimly. Everyone else has.

As far as he was concerned, Sheri was just some screwed-up slut who was stupid and desperate enough to do whatever he told her to do, whether it was pay his rent or blow his friends. He didn't owe her a god-damned thing. Let those creatures do whatever they wanted with her. It had nothing to do with him.

“Bitches can be a real ball and chain, eh, Perry?” Jag's voice came out of the thing squatting atop the hill above him, grinning down at him with eyes the color of whiskey. The thing looked like a wolf, but it was jointed wrong and wearing a black leather jacket with torn sleeves.

Behind him he heard the sound of tearing fabric and what was either barking or laughter, followed by Sheri screaming. Perry refused to turn around to look.

“Just take the girl!” he shouted at the creature leering at him. “I don't care! Just let me go! I won't tell anyone what happened out here!”