Breeds 2 (16 page)

“Oh,” Haley said, startled by the sudden appearance and swearing to herself for not checking better.

“Oh is right,” the shadow grumbled and inspected itself. “Well, shit. Fucking pissed myself. God
damnit
.”

Haley froze on the crate. Beer bottle. She should have realized it. A drunk. A drunk passed out on the other side of the dumpster. Drunks were unpredictable. Some folks she knew had been sent to the hospital after encounters with drunk people. Some others had been showered with kindness.

“The fuck you staring at?” the shadow barked, the outline tensing.

Haley’s legs quivered.

“Huh? The fuck you doing back here? Hey, you just––”

The man patted himself down, the noise like soft firecrackers. Haley placed one foot on the ground and then the other, already forgetting about the pizza box.

“The fuck’s my wallet?” the man slurred and spun around, accidentally crashing his right arm into the bin. He grunted at the connection and bent at the waist.

Haley ran, ran with all the speed her bundled frame could muster.

She almost made it.

The drunk quickly recovered, detecting her attempted escape. Knowing that a guiltless person wouldn’t have run at all, he took after her and caught her almost twenty strides from the dumpster.

“Hey!”

Hands grabbed Haley by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall. She crumpled with a gasp. Her bottom touched concrete just as a knee crashed into her face, bouncing her head off a brick wall.

“The fuck you going, huh? The fuck you going?” the dark face demanded, the head now only a mouth. A hand grabbed her chin, yanked it up where a hand slapped her twice. The impact summoned flickering explosions before Haley’s eyes. She gasped again.

“You steal my wallet? You little bitch?”

Her head was plied one way and then the other before being shoved against the wall. The drunk slapped her again before invading her pockets, turning them out.

“Where is it?” he demanded and pulled her to her feet with enough force to dislocate her shoulders. “Where is it?”

He slammed her against the bricks.

“I don’t have it,” Haley squawked and got slapped hard across the face a second before he punched her square in the gut. The old back-alley one-two. Haley collapsed, holding her middle while croaking for breath.

“Like fuck you don’t have it. You got it. Damn good thing I woke up when I did. Christ almighty. Bad enough I fucking pass out in the street, but to have you steal my wallet? The fuck’s the world coming to? This town used to be safe.”

He smacked her across the forehead, powerful enough to daze her. “You smell like week-old BO, honey. Thought I smelled bad.”

Without pausing, he ripped at the front of her coat, but his fingers slipped. Growling, he lifted her chin and yanked the zipper down. A second later, hands roughly explored her breasts, hefting and squeezing them through her old but warm sweatshirt.

“Not here, either,” he muttered, his tone softening, becoming curious. “Geez, you got a set.”

More rough fondling, hard enough to restart Haley’s breathing. “No.”

“Oh fuck yeah, you do.”

She grabbed his wrists but he pushed her away and slapped her.
Hard.
Her nose let loose upon contact. A pained whimper left her before he waved a finger in front of her face.

“Don’t fucking flatter yourself, bitch. I’d just as soon fuck a tea bag. I just want my wallet.”

“I don’t have it.”

He pulled on her arms, dragging Haley to her feet. He whirled her around and pushed her against the wall. His hands groped her again and she whimpered at the rude and painful exploration.

“Nothing. Where the hell did you hide it? Where’d you hide it?”

Haley squeezed her eyes shut, knowing what was coming. He shoved her into the cold bricks again and kneed her right buttock, the pain sparkling.

“All right,” he wheezed, a different tone to his voice. “All right. Time for a full body search. I’m gonna find that wallet, honey. You bet your balls I’m gonna––”

The sound of feet slapping the ground turned both Haley and her attacker’s heads to the left. An outline streaked into the drunk groper, lifting him and carrying him a good five or six strides. The vengeful silhouette heaved Haley’s attacker at the pizza dumpster, where he crashed against the iron hide like a sack of bones bouncing off a stern dinner gong.

That was the fight. Over and done in no more than two seconds.

Haley covered her bleeding nose and mouth and coughed pure undiluted relief into her hands. She slunk toward the alley mouth, back the way she’d come, swearing to never venture into this part of town ever again.

She glanced over her shoulder to check on her rescuer, turning around as if bewildered. In the scant light, Haley gasped at the blackness covering his otherwise bare back.

“You’re bleeding,” she gasped, stopping in her tracks and wondering where the drunk had a knife, let alone the time to stab. That thought struck her as near senseless. If her attacker had a knife, he would have used it on her.

Sonofabitch
.

The man who’d saved her whirled at the sound of her voice, and Haley got the second surprise of the pre-dawn hours. The guy who’d saved her neck didn’t have a stitch of clothing on him.

“Are you high?” she demanded, leaning against the wall. “You’ve got nothing on.”

Muscular shoulders heaving, the man said nothing. He watched her, like a dog stalking a rabbit, but abruptly walked away. Haley watched him. If he was homeless, the guy was hurting. He stumbled past the unmoving shape of the drunk and let him be. The alley mouth on the far end beckoned and the naked man headed in that direction. He winked out at times but then emerged, framed between two buildings and illuminated by streetlights.

She exhaled in relief and looked to the ground.

Her giblets had been righteously saved.

A screech of tires combined with a fleshy
clap
frightened her. She whipped around in time to see a car skidding to a stop. Someone screamed from inside the vehicle, the voice angry and a little freaked out, just seconds before the driver backed up and sped off into the night.

Haley looked to the alley mouth, the retreating car’s roar in her ears.

What just happened
? She waited, faltered on what to do for just a second, then burst into motion. A naked guy had saved her, high or not. She hurried to the other side, ignoring the still prone shape of her drunk attacker, and emerged underneath glaring streetlights. There, pushing himself to his hands and knees and showing a back that had been shredded to tatters of skin and bloody musculature, was the guy who’d saved her.

Perhaps it was the way he rose to his feet and looked around like a dazed boxer being warned by a referee. Perhaps it was because, despite his lack of clothing, the freak had saved Haley’s bacon. Or perhaps it was because it was a damp fall night, and there was a person hurt and in need after a hit-and-run.

Whatever the reason, Haley Walker approached the injured stranger in the street. She took her warm coat off and, despite the blood streaming down his waist and over bare buttocks, bundled him up as best as she could.

He didn’t resist.

With the shopping completed, the two wardens returned to the apartment building and lugged nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of food up to Kirk’s place. The time was just after six in the morning, and the sky remained dark with cloudy indecision. Bryce dumped most of the meat into the freezer, but not before selecting four roasts and slapping them on the kitchen counter. Kirk stowed the remaining food away in cupboards while trying hard not to take notice of Carma or make eye contact with her. The pack leader sat in the living room with the others leaning in, going over plans for the approaching hunt. A city map lay spread out over the coffee table, covering his paperback. Kirk frowned, hoping Carma didn’t toss it away. A stream of thoughts, situations, lines and how they played out went through his mind, then, and he willed himself to stay cool, stay aloof, and let her come to him.

Only problem was… he knew she wouldn’t come to him.

“Kirk, get in here,” Carma said from the living room.

With a sigh, he finished stashing away the vegetables, knowing that there was more grub in his apartment now than he’d kept on hand all last year. Wiping his nose and warning himself to be alert, he walked into the living room and faced the pack. Some names he picked up while he was working, and while he knew a little of Bryce and his particular personality, he knew nothing about the others.

“Where’s this medical examiner’s building?”

“On the southwest side of town.” Kirk pointed to the location on the map.

“And Bailey ran where when he escaped?”

“Into the city,” he replied, indicating a mesh of street names and lines.

“Won’t be long then,” said the other woman in the group, a slender, muscular brunette called Janice. She sat on the sofa, her legs crossed, dark eyes narrowed and emanating waves of hard ass.

Carma ignored her. “And we’ll be searching right up to the end. In a suit, we can’t sniff him out, and he’s going to be in a suit until he changes. We can’t change and comb the city for obvious reasons, so we’ll stay in our own suits during the hunt.”

Suits.
Kirk rolled his eyes. He never got used to thinking of his own human flesh as a suit.

“Until we find him,” said the Asian guy named Ken Cyler. Ken had tossed his winter coat off and stood with his arms crossed, sweater sleeves pushed up to his elbows. His heavily corded forearms resembled intertwined steel cables. His hair was buzzed short on the sides and spiked on top, displaying an angular face.

“Even then, you stay back and follow Bailey to his den. Don’t spook him and don’t engage him. No one fucking goes one-on-one with this thing. Hear that? Call here if and when you make contact. Two people will be here at all times and if you call, they’ll relay the message to the rest, so keep your phones charged and make sure they’re switched on. Wait for the rest of the pack to arrive on scene. When that happens, I’ll assess the situation and we’ll take Bailey as a unit. The elders prefer to have his body back but they’ve also informed me it’s not a priority. As long as we can dispose of it correctly. So. Any questions?”

No one spoke up.

“All right, I’ll be sending some of you out immediately. You’ll be on your own. Call back here with updates every half hour and leave a message if you can’t get through at the time. Stay on the line if you got him. Understood?”

Heads nodded.

Carma studied their faces in turn, even locking eyes with Kirk for a second. The brief contact lit up his spine.

“As of now, we have eight days before the next full moon. Eight. I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long, one way or the other. If history repeats itself, he’ll be tearing into people while in his suit, which will bring the authorities into the picture. Our biggest concern will be that. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will…do not engage the police. If they shoot you and there’s no way out, go down. Stay down, and escape the ambulance when it’s en route to the hospital.”

“What about Tasers?” Ken asked.

“Treat them as guns and go down.”

“What if they shoot us in the head?” asked Sam Mausler, the war veteran. Stubbly and as tough as stropped leather, his gray eyes were sharp enough to pick up on individual auras.

“They won’t shoot you in the head unless you give them reason to,” Carma answered mechanically. “So don’t give them reason to. You good?”

Tight-lipped and contemplative, Mausler nodded.

“Don’t give anyone a reason to unload into your face. That’s what brought us here, and if the police get wind of something beyond a naked crackhead running through the streets, they might opt for heavier firepower and escalate the situation to a level we don’t want to deal with. We want this finished before the moon hits. Before Bailey changes. He’ll be a pup all over again, with a capacity for violence on a scale that we’re all aware of. And in a city of this size, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. A time bomb.”

Kirk blinked at the word. A time bomb. In downtown Halifax. A horror show just ticking away.

Carma looked to the Halifax warden. “Kirk, this is your town, but I want you here with me for the next few hours. There’s one more warden coming in. We can start searching in teams now. In shifts. There are seven of us total here. That’s almost double what the elders had in the field the last time this happened. Janice, Sam, Ian, and Ken, you guys are up. Head back to the medical examiners building and see if you can catch a scent and a trail. Go as far as you can before you lose it. Then split. Remember your streets and landmarks. Janice, you’re north. Sam, south. Ken’s west and Ian’s east. Get out there and start sniffing. I don’t care if you’re tired. For the next six hours, you’re out there until I call you back. You good?”

The assortment of
weres
nodded. Kirk tried to relax, realizing he’d be around his apartment.

“One last thing,” Carma said. “I’ve been thinking about the way this thing attacked Baxter, Ezekiel, and Morris. It smashed Baxter’s head against a wall and tore out Ezekiel’s throat. It broke Morris’s neck. That tells me the thing might not remember exactly how to kill a
were
, but based on those attacks, I think it instinctively knows where to strike, even though it might not fully realize why. So be careful out there. It’s not completely mindless.”

No one moved, the pack leader’s words instilling yet another layer of danger to the hunt.

“All right,” Carma said. “Go pee if you have to. I suggest keeping your ears to the ground. Chase any police cars or ambulances with their lights flashing. It might not be our boy, but it might be our boy. Take Kirk’s truck over to the site. Don’t take any cabs and don’t leave the truck in a place where someone might get curious about it. Keys.”

She snapped her hand out to Kirk, who dug the set out of a pocket. When Carma had them, she passed them along to Ian.

The pack leader grew quiet then, eyes downcast, her features stern. “Happy hunting,” she finally said.