Men of the Otherworld (30 page)

“Shit!” he said, jumping as he saw me. “What the hell—?” He stopped, nostrils flaring, then blinked as he realized I wasn't some
neighborhood teen trespassing in Stonehaven's woods. He squinted in the darkness. “Shit. You're Malcolm's kid, aren't you?”

“No,” I said. “Jeremy's in the house, and he's not coming out so don't bother—”

“Not Jeremy. The other one. The boy. The one Malcolm's been bragging about. So his phantom foster son isn't a phantom after all, huh? I figured it was bullshit, since no one's ever seen you.”

“They see me. They just don't live to tell about it.”

The mutt rolled his eyes. “Yeah, good one,” he said, but a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes said he wasn't completely sure I was bluffing.

I sized up the mutt. Jeremy's age, decent physical condition. Yeah, he'd do. Now I just needed to persuade him to help me set up the circumstances I required.

“You know Nick Sorrentino?” I asked, circling the mutt, making him turn to watch me.

A snort. “What is this? Small talk? I came here to fight, in case you didn't figure that out, kiddo.”

“Nick Sorrentino,” I repeated. “Do you know who he is?”

“Sure. Antonio's kid.”

“He's a friend of mine.”

“Bully for you.”

I stopped circling and leaned against a tree, arms crossed. The mutt visibly relaxed.

“Nick's got this problem,” I said. “Maybe you can help me solve it.”

“What do I look like? Dear Abby? I can't solve—”

“Yeah, I think you can. See, here's Nick's problem. He's been a full werewolf for nearly a year, but he's never fought a mutt. Never even been close to a fight. Antonio and Dominic won't let him.”

The mutt sniffed. “Coddling the boy, like they do with Jorge. Figures.”

“Well, that's where I'm hoping you can help. Nick wants a fight, and I want to give him one. Chance to fight the Alpha's grandson? A sweet deal for any mutt.”

“You want me to fight him instead of you? Uh-uh. Even if he's a Sorrentino, he's a pup with no notches on his belt. I'm beyond that. But Malcolm's protégé?” He grinned. “Now that might be a challenge worth winning.”

“It is. And I'm not trying to take it from you. Here's the deal. You want a shot at me, bring a friend for Nick. You do have friends, don't you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I'm sure one of those friends isn't as experienced as you. He'd be happy for the chance to fight Nick. And he'd owe you one for setting it up.”

The mutt paused, then peered at me. “You wouldn't be trying to get out of a fight, would—”

I pounced and knocked him to the ground, then jammed my forearm against his throat. “Do I look like I'm trying to blow off a fight?”

The mutt gasped. I eased back, but stayed on his chest.

“You're good,” he wheezed.

For a moment, I wondered whether I'd miscalculated and scared him off, but then his eyes gleamed with the prospect of the bragging rights he'd earn by beating me. After all, I was just a kid. A decent fighter for my age, but an inexperienced, cocky pup nonetheless.

“Okay, sure,” he said. “I know a couple of guys. Let's set something up.”

So we did.

“A small fight?” Nick said, trailing down the path after me. “Just a small one.”

“Yeah, sure, we'll just tell them ‘hey, Nick wants a fight, but just a small one, so stop before you kill him, please.’”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don't,” I said. I stopped to readjust my knapsack, then hoisted the hockey bag again.

“I can carry that,” Nick said, reaching for the hockey bag.

I grunted a negative and swung it out of his reach. He didn't need to see what was in there. It certainly wasn't hockey equipment. This just happened to be the biggest bag I could find at the sporting goods store, and the one that would look least suspicious if someone saw me hauling it around in November.

“There's no such thing as a small fight,” I said. “There are short fights and there are long fights, and either way you can get killed and that's not on the agenda for today. Telling them you want a fight was a ruse.” I caught his look of confusion. “An excuse.”

“But I
do
want a fight.”

“You'll get your chance soon enough. No need to go looking for one.”

He swerved past me to open the door on the old wooden hunting cabin. I nodded my thanks and walked inside. It was empty, and had been for months, being off-season. Dozens of these cabins dotted the countryside around here. I'd scouted the area last month and found two possibilities. Both were at least a mile from the nearest house, meaning I'd have plenty of time to work, and clean up after, without fear of interruption.

“Do you want to go over it again?” I asked.

Nick shook his head.

“Okay, then go on outside and let me set up.”

“I could help—”

“No,” I said, and shoved him toward the door.

I'd arranged to meet the mutt and his friend at noon, a half-mile from the cabin. Convenient, but not too close.

The next step was difficult. Mentally difficult. I had to cheat. No matter how senselessly violent werewolf fights may seem, they came with set rules of behavior, what human fighters might call “gentleman's rules.” You couldn't sneak up from behind. You couldn't take three friends to fight one guy. You couldn't use weapons. It had to be a fair, one-on-one, fist fight. But breaking the rules was the only way to guarantee that my plan would succeed.

Nick and I broke the first one by jumping the mutts on their way to the fight. We slipped downwind, knocked them down, then gagged and tied them. Every part of me cringed at the injustice of this, but I only had to remind myself of the alternative—a lifetime of battling trespassing mutts—and even my wolf brain agreed that this was for the best. Territory had to be protected
and, even if this wasn't the way a wolf would protect it, it was acceptable under the circumstances.

After we tied them up, I gave them each a half-dose of the sedative I'd swiped from Jeremy's medical supplies. It was enough to make them too groggy to struggle, but not too groggy to walk to the cabin.

Once there, Nick took the mutt he'd been supposed to fight— the newcomer—and tied him to a tree. I double-checked the knots, and gave him more sedative, to put him to sleep. Then I took my mutt—the one who'd first come to challenge Jeremy— into the cabin.

I never took the gag from his mouth, and never said a word to him. There was nothing to say. He'd trespassed on our property, and he knew that the penalty for that might be death. The death he was about to receive, though, was a punishment far in excess of the crime.

Again, while I knew what had to be done, I also understood the unfairness of it. All I could do, then, was to make sure he'd suffer no more than he would have if we'd fought. So when we were in the cabin, I gave him the rest of the sedative dose, plus another half-shot. He was unconscious within minutes. Then I hoisted him onto the plastic-covered table, double-checked the room, making sure all the plastic sheeting was still in place, and set to work.

It took two hours. A couple of times, I thought I wouldn't be able to finish. No, I wasn't overcome by horror or disgust at the reality of what I'd decided to do. I understand that from a human point of view, maybe I should have been, but that wasn't a problem. This was a job that needed to be done, and because I knew the mutt felt nothing, it was no different than working with a corpse. To me, he was already dead.

The problem was that I had to keep him alive, and that was a
feat that required more medical skill than I possessed. As part of my research, I'd studied field guides for war medicine, so I had some idea how to cauterize the wounds I was inflicting and keep him from bleeding out, but it wasn't easy.

Finally, the job was done. I pulled off the raincoat I'd donned, so the blood spatter wouldn't spook Nick, then headed outside.

By now, the other mutt was awake and struggling.

“That really did take a long time,” Nick said. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

“You remember the plan, right? I'm taking him inside and you're waiting out here.”

“Sure, but wouldn't it be easier—”

“No.”

“It'd be safer if there were two of us—”

I grabbed Nick's arm and pulled him aside, out of earshot of the other mutt. “You're not going inside, Nick. Not going in or looking in. You promised.”

“Shit, what did you—?”

“I'm trying to protect our territory. That's all you need to know.”

He glanced at the cabin, then at me. “Yeah. Okay.”

I took a knife from my pocket and advanced on the other mutt. His eyes widened at the sight of the knife, but I only cut the ropes holding him to the tree. Then I dragged him to his feet and shoved him toward the cabin.

He looked around, as if considering making a break for it, but could barely walk, let alone run. At the door, I glanced back once, to make sure Nick was staying outside, then went in and locked the door behind us.

*   *   *

I waited until the mutt finished emptying his stomach. The smell of vomit almost dowsed the stink of blood. Almost.

“You sick son of a bitch,” he whispered, still doubled over. “How could you—?”

He puked again. I waited until the retching stopped.

“He came on my territory,” I said quietly. “From now on, any mutt who comes on my territory is going to end up like this. If you want to be the last mutt to walk away alive, then there's something I need you to do for me.”

He shot upright. “I am not doing anything—”

I grabbed his hand, and forced it over the heart of the mutt on the table. The other mutt's eyes went round and he jerked back.

“He's alive? He's still alive? You kept him—?”

The mutt swung at me, lost his balance on the blood-slicked plastic sheeting and skidded to the floor. I left him there, grabbed an axe from the pile of tools, then finished the job on the unconscious mutt.

“There,” I said, turning to the one on the floor. “He's dead. I just wanted to show you that I
could
keep him alive. Think about that. I could do this to you, and let you live.”

He lunged for my legs, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and swung him to his feet, then shoved him against the wall and held him there until his struggles stopped.

“The price for your life is this: you need to pass on what you've seen. When you leave here, you're taking the first plane out of New York State. You're flying back to your friends and telling them what happened, every detail of it. You'll warn them that if they come here, this is what they can expect. Then, once you've told them, you'll find another mutt and tell him, and another, and tell him. If you don't—”

“You'll come after me,” the mutt said between clenched teeth.
His eyes blazed hate, but no amount of revulsion could cover the raw fear behind it.

“Yes, I'll come after you, but not just if you don't pass along the message. If anyone shows up here again, then I'll know you haven't done your job and I'll come after you.”

“What?” he yelped. “I can't tell every last goddamned mutt in the world and even if I could, what's to say they'll listen to me?”

“If you tell the story right, they'll listen, and they'll do your job for you by passing it on.”

“But what if they don't believe me? Shit, what person in their right mind could believe that someone would—?” His gaze swept the room, and he swallowed. “They won't believe me.”

“Yes, they will.” I dropped him, strode across the room and grabbed a handful of Polaroid shots. “If they don't, show them these.”

“You took pictures? Jesus Christ! You're—you're—”

“Someone you don't ever want to meet again,” I said.

I shoved the pictures into his pocket and pushed him out the door.

And so the legend began. The mutt took my photos and took my tale and spread them as far as he could. The story snowballed, as all such stories do, and over the years I've heard dozens of versions of it, each more outrageous than the last. Yet I never deny any of them. What I did was bad enough. If they think I'm capable of doing worse, why say otherwise? Sure, they think I'm the worst kind of depraved monster, but if it keeps them off our territory, that's all that matters.

According to the legend, that day was the last day any mutt ever set foot near Stonehaven. Is that true? Of course not. The story didn't spread fast enough to warn off every mutt. Even
when it did, a couple who
had
heard the tale couldn't resist taking a shot at this “wolf-monster.” Yet none of those mutts ever returned, so even if their friends knew they'd come and that my victim hadn't really been the last mutt to trespass at Stonehaven, they didn't let this inconsistency get in the way of a good story.

The news of what I'd done eventually spread to the Pack. As for Jeremy, while I'm sure he heard about it within a year or so, he never mentioned it to me. I don't think he knew how to handle it. He couldn't endorse my methods, but the whole Pack benefited from the results, so how could he complain? Take me aside and say “that was a very, very bad thing you did, Clay. I know why you did it, and I think it might have been the right thing to do, but please don't ever do it again”?

At thirty-one, Jeremy was still coming to terms with the ugly side of leadership—the thought that he might need to commit or sanction acts of violence to reduce the violence in our lives. As he'd said, the better we could fight, the less we'd have to. In killing the mutt so horribly, I'd tested his theory in a way I'm sure he'd never anticipated but, in the end, he saw that it did work. One act of extreme violence bought us two decades of peace at Stonehaven. No one could argue about that.

Jeremy turned thirty-two that spring. For his birthday, I decided to get him some special art supplies. In the past few years, he'd been devoting more time to his painting and I wanted to show him that even if I couldn't really share his enthusiasm, I fully supported it.

The problem was that I had no idea what “special art supplies” were, or what type Jeremy needed. So I called his mentor in New York. That was tough for me, phoning a human stranger and asking for help, but I was determined to get the best present possible, regardless of the monetary or psychological cost.