Laws of Nature -2 (2 page)
Authors: Christopher Golden
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Horror, #Fantasy, #Fantasy & Magic
When the guy was gone, Danny -- who was subbing for the bartender Bill Cantwell -- leaned over the bar. "Damn, Jack, I thought for sure we were gonna have to take the big bastard down."
Jack smiled softly. Danny was all of five eight and maybe one hundred and forty pounds, but he was a scrapper. Like a lot of the pub's staff, he was a Southie boy.
"He didn't pay," Danny added.
"Forget it," Jack told him.
Molly met him at the steps that separated the bar from the restaurant, a look of consternation on her face.
"No?" she asked, glancing toward the front door.
"No," Jack reassured her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently.
Molly cursed under her breath. "After two and a half months I'm still totally paranoid."
Jack reached out and tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. "Stay paranoid," he warned. "We have reason to be."
Though it was well past eight o'clock, it had only just begun to get dark as Tucker Marshall strode angrily into the street from Bridget's Irisk Rose Pub. He was glad he didn't know anyone in Boston yet. The kid in the pub had embarrassed him. He knew he could have snapped the boy in half if he'd wanted to, but Tucker had come to town to audition for the touring company of the new Lloyd Webber musical and had a callback in the morning. The last thing he needed was to spend a few days in jail, or worse yet, damage his face.
The buffalo wings he'd had at the bar sat heavily in his belly, sloshing around with a couple of mugs of beer. What unsettled him, though, was the anger that still roiled in him. Tucker wasn't the kind of guy to walk away from a fight. That sweet little redhead at the restaurant had been something, that was for sure. He'd made eye contact, thinking maybe he would start up a conversation. Not a crime, as far as he knew. Women liked guys who were intense, at least in his experience.
Grumbling, Tucker strode across the street, barely looking where he was going. A car ground to an abrupt halt to avoid hitting him and the driver laid on the horn. Tucker shot him the finger without even looking up. He turned toward Quincy Market, figuring he could work off some of his anger just walking around, maybe get an ice cream or something. There were a lot of beautiful women, both tourists and locals, down around that part of Boston that second week of July. If he could strike up a conversation, get a chance to run his line, talk about being an actor...well, Tucker usually had good luck reeling in the ladies.
The sky was dimming quickly now, the sun disappearing behind the cityscape to the west. Tucker gazed a moment in appreciation as the last rays of light shot scythes of gold between the buildings.
As he was starting to turn his attention back to the sidewalk in front of him, he slammed right into a bald man who was speaking with a friend. The man bumped into his friend and both of them almost fell before regaining their footing.
"Sorry," Tucker mumbled.
He started to go around them.
The guy he'd run into grabbed him by the hair, spun him around and shoved him up against the side of a building hard enough that his head bounced off the bricks with a painful thump. Tucker grunted as all the fury that had been building up in him in the previous few minutes combined with a new wave of rage. He forgot all about his audition. Fists balled, he cocked his right arm back and threw the first punch.
"You sorry son-of-a -- "
The powerful hand that gripped his throat choked off his words. The bald guy batted Tucker's fist away with his free hand and leaned in close. His breath was rank with the odor of rotting meat, and his teeth were too sharp.
That wasn't the only thing Tucker noticed about the bald man in that instant. His teeth, yeah. But his eyes were wrong, too. Not like a person's, but rimmed with red like a wild animal's. And his face...his face seemed to change, to pulse. He sneered, and for an eyeblink it was almost as though he had the face of an animal, a snout like that of a dog. Or a wolf.
Hair shot through the man's scalp and his face, but only a quarter inch, just a bristle.
Impossible.
"Do you want to die?" the guy, who wasn't bald anymore, snarled.
Tucker shook his head vigorously.
"Apologize."
He was not about to argue that he had already done so. "I'm...I wasn't paying attention. I'm sorry." Tucker stared at his shoes a second; his body felt electrified with fear and astonishment. People did not grow hair in front of you. And the teeth...and the eyes.
"Hey."
The voice was soft and dangerous. Tucker glanced up nervously to see the bald man smiling at him. Normal teeth. Smooth scalp.
"Watch your goddamn step," the guy warned him. "You just never know who you're going to run into."
Then he spun Tucker away from the wall and shoved him on his way. Tucker stumbled a few steps and then hurried on without so much as a single glance back.
As quickly as he could, Tucker made his way toward the North End, where a friend was letting him crash on a futon in the living room. He had forgotten all about cruising Quincy Market, trying to meet women. He had also decided that he did not like Boston.
Not at all.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Braun frowned, glared at Dubrowski, and ran a hand over his hairless scalp. "Guy ran into me, Doobie. Pissed me off. What do you expect, I should let him knock me on my ass and not say sumthin'?"
Anxious, Dubrowski glanced along the street toward Quincy Market, watching to make sure the pretty boy had gone on his way. Then he shot a glance in the other direction, toward Bridget's. Nobody had come outside or seemed to have noticed anything. Finally, he turned his withering gaze upon Braun.
"Go after him. Kill him. Either make it appear to be a simple murder, or, if you must eat, do
not
leave a body, even if you have to gnaw the bones and toss them in the harbor. After what happened with Tanzer, we cannot afford to have anyone suspect there are those of us who have not fled this city."
"Fine," Braun said, sniffing petulantly. "Gotta tell ya, though, Doobie, I got no idea why we're still screwing around here. We oughta take off, find someplace safe to hunt."
"And so we shall," Dubrowski promised. His gaze moved back toward Bridget's across the street. "Just as soon as we have tasted blood, in vengeance for the slaughter of Tanzer and the others of the pack."
With lightning speed, Dubrowski's right hand lashed out, and he scratched deep furrows in Braun's left cheek. Braun hissed with pain and snarled loudly, but resisted making the change that such a break of concentration sometimes brought.
"What have I told you about calling me 'Doobie'?"
Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Golden
"All these folks are victims of the Prowlers. You got vengeance for me and some others in Boston. They're hoping you'll do the same here, Artie explained."
Jack glanced quickly over his shoulder. The ghosts had moved out into the street now, standing in the rain as a few errant rays of sun broke through and speared the pavement around them. Most of them hung their heads as though ashamed.
"I don't get it, though," Jack whispered. "One of them tried to get me to turn around. Now this bunch won't even look at me."
Artie did not respond at first. Jack had to look in the rearview mirror to make sure he was still there. Then those black, bottomless-pit eyes met his gaze, and he shuddered and returned his attention to the road.
"Artie?" Jack prodded.
"They're feeling a little guilty," Artie finally revealed.
Jack furrowed his brow. "Why?"
"They think you're gonna die."
Prowlers Series
by Christopher Golden
Prowlers
Laws of Nature
Predator and Prey (
coming soon
)
Available from Pocket Books
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET PULSE published by
Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Golden
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-2814-5
First Pocket Pulse printing August 2001
POCKET PULSE and colophon are trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For my amigo,
Steve Bissette
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, my love and gratitude to Connie and my boys, Nicholas and Daniel. Thanks, as always, to my agent, Lori Perkins, and to Lisa Clancy and Micol Ostow at Pocket Books. Extra special thanks to Tom Sniegoski and Rick Hautala.
Alarmed by the rumble of an approaching engine, a murder of crows took flight from the heavy trees that hung on either side of the Post Road. Against the early morning sky, the flurry of black wings that momentarily blotted out the sunlight seemed particularly ominous. Then they were gone, resettling in the sprawl of maples and elms on the far side of Henry Lemoine's property, and the sky was bright and blue again.
Phil Garraty shivered as the shadow of the birds passed above him, but barely noticed his own reaction. Truth be told, he liked seeing the birds. Crows, the odd hawk or three, even sparrows and such, were a welcome sight. Though Buckton, Vermont was about as rural as a town could get and stil have cable television, they didn't have much by way of wildlife. He saw the occasional deer or rabbit, even a fox now and then, but no more than that, and with nowhere the frequency he'd been told was normal for towns in the area.
Some of the families in Buckton stil hunted, and most of the tourists they got were hunters who'd found their way into town by mistake. Phil figured that was the explanation. Somehow, the animals must have developed a kind of sixth sense about areas where there was a lot of hunting.
In the ancient postal van he'd been driving for seventeen years as Buckton's only mail carrier, he bumped along Route 31 with early U2 blaring out of the speakers from the CD player he'd rigged under the dash. The narrow two-lane road led south out of town toward Rutland. Nobody in town cal ed it anything but the Post Road, and Phil Garraty liked that; made it feel like it was
his
road.
It was just after nine in the morning and he was beginning the last leg of his rounds. He had started north of town at six A.M., made a circuit of the farm and dairy roads up that way, then delivered the bulk of each day's mail in the square mile that made up the downtown area of Buckton before heading south. Only a hundred-and-twenty-seven homes to deliver to, al told, with a dozen on the southern end of the Post Road and the last few on Route 219, which intersected with it a mile south of town and ran east to west. Lot of traffic passed on 219, but al of it headed somewhere else.
That was the way people in Buckton liked it.
Dave Lanphear and his boys at Public Works hadn't been out to trim the trees on the sides of the road, and as Phil drove the van toward the junction with 219, the foliage grew thicker on both sides, spread out in a canopy above the pavement. From ful sunlight, the road ahead plunged into profound shadow, branches swaying with the breeze. He took off his sunglasses and tossed them on the seat beside him. Suddenly, out of the warmth, he found the wind that blew through the van to be surprisingly chil y.
The plaintive wail of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" surged from the speakers and Phil sang along. The van trundled along at about thirty-five miles per hour as he approached the junction.
Though locals used the Post Road more frequently than 219, the east-west road had more traffic and a higher speed limit, so Phil was forced to brake for the stop sign. Just two stops on the other side of the junction, then he would double back for the four homes he delivered to on 219.
Sunlight flickered through the branches above, and Phil squinted against the brightness as the van rattled to a ful stop. A car flew by on Route 219, doing at least sixty, and he sighed as it disappeared around a curve. He accelerated, and the van's engine grumbled as it picked up speed again, crossing 219 and continuing along down the Post Road.
He'd barely gotten it up to twenty-five before something dropped out of the trees above him. The windshield splintered and sagged inward, a mass of spiderweb cracks. Phil shouted in shock and momentary fear, then jammed his foot on the brake. The van shuddered to a stop and the engine quit with an exhausted whimper.
There wasn't much by way of a hood on the van, but the thing on the windshield held on just the same. He spied it through the many facets of the ruined windshield, and found that he could not breathe. Movement in the woods off to his left drew his attention, and Phil glanced over to see several huge, bestial figures slipping through the shadows beneath the trees. As one, they trotted into the road toward the van.
