Prowlers - 1 (30 page)

stay clear. Just keep your heads down until I say different, all right?"

Jack smiled. "We can do that."

CHAPTER 14

A little over an hour after their conversation with Castillo, Bridget's was empty again. The crime scene team had done a half-assed job at best, but everyone pretended not to notice. After all, they were trying very hard not to find evidence of the Prowlers, whose bodies would likely be cremated before dawn. Jack had no idea how the police were going to handle the eyewitnesses, but he figured it wasn't his business. And, after all, who would believe them? Particularly if the people who ran Bridget's Irish Rose didn't confirm their story.

While the cops were still around, Jack and Molly and Bill and Courtney circled one another warily. Revelations about Bill and Jack hung in the air the way secrets tend to do.

Now, though, Courtney locked the door behind the last of the cops and turned to face the other three, who had begun cleaning up.

"They're gone," she said.

The words echoed in the stillness of the pub. Jack was collecting the wreckage of a shattered table while Molly swept broken glass off the floor. Over at the bar, Bill was setting things right. They all looked up at Courtney.

"Funny how they didn't even bother with that yellow crime scene tape, huh?" Jack scowled and added a broken chair leg to the mess of the splintered table. Then he turned toward Bill, all his anger beginning to boil up in him.

Bill beat him to it. "You see the Ghostlands," the bartender said, his voice tinged with wonder.

Jack blinked. Then he frowned. "What do you know about it? They told me your kind couldn't see them."

"We can't, normally," Bill admitted as he stepped down from the bar area and the four of them converged again in the middle of the restaurant. "But then, neither can humans. I saw it once, though. Someone I..." He faltered, eyes downcast.

"Someone you what?" Jack demanded.

Molly stepped in toward Bill, and the big man, the Prowler, flinched. Then he saw the tenderness on her face, and he relaxed a bit as she lay a hand on his arm. "Someone you killed, right?" she said. "The person touched you somehow and you saw what Jack sees?"

Bill nodded. "Many of my race are no longer predators, but I doubt any of us come by the decision quite the same way. For me, it was that moment. I saw the

anguish in the souls of humans I'd killed, and I found beauty there."

His eyes locked on Jack's. "We don't have souls. There's no Ghostlands for us."

"Good," Molly said simply.

Bill stared at the bitter expression on her face. Then he shook his head sadly. "You killed that Prowler, Carver, without a second thought. He deserved it, sure. But would it make a difference if he'd been a different sort? The cops don't care how many of my kind you kill, whatever their motivation. They can't even charge you with murder. Why is that?"

"Because you're animals," Molly said.

There was a sadness, a weariness in her voice. Despite her pain and anger, it seemed to Jack that she was not taking it out on Bill, just trying to work things out in her own heart.

Bill nodded. "True. But so are you. The truth is, we're a different sort of animal. I had the same disdain for human lives that you have for Prowlers. Our kind are almost extinct, mainly because of humanity. But then I saw the one thing that most separates us—that there is virtue in humanity that can't be found in other races of animals, including my own—and I knew I couldn't do it anymore."

Silence filled the pub. Rolled across it like swift thunderclouds across a darkening sky and equally ominous. Jack struggled with the emotions that roiled within him. His love for Bill warred with his anger. He glanced at Molly and saw in her eyes that she, too, did not know how to proceed.

Then he looked at his sister. Courtney was staring at Bill, her eyes filled with tears. It was the first time Jack had seen her cry in years.

"Court?" he whispered.

She ignored him. Instead, she went to Bill. When he met her tearful gaze, his own eyes began to fill and he reached out for her. She did not flinch or turn away. Rather, she dropped her cane and stumbled into his embrace, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

For a long moment, the silence remained unbroken save for the small sounds that escaped her

lips.

Then Courtney pulled away from Bill and reached up to stroke the contours of his face. "You're wrong," she said.

"I don't—"Bill began.

"You're wrong," she said again, more fervently, cutting him off. "You said the virtue of humanity couldn't be found among your kind and you are wrong, Bill Cantwell. In my head I know that this isn't your face, but your eyes don't change. And in my heart I know that means something. Everything I love about you I see in your eyes. Maybe your kind have no souls, I wouldn't know about that. But I bet you're wrong about that, too."

Bill held her dose, breathing in the scent of her hair with a tiny smile on the facade he called a face. And yet Jack could not accept that it was just a facade.

"Thank you," Bill whispered to her.

"You saved our lives. Thank you."

Molly moved to Jack's side and their eyes met. He

slipped an arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder, her forlorn gaze matching the bittersweet ache in his heart.

Then Courtney turned to her little brother. "Jack," she said. "Can you really do this? Can you talk to the dead?"

He wanted to turn away but she held his gaze. "Not all of them. Only the ones who are still around, who haven't moved on."

"You never said a word."

"I didn't think you'd believe me."

"Fair enough," Courtney told him, a frown deepening the thin lines on her forehead. "But just so we're clear, I hope you never keep something like that from me again. Have a little faith in your sister, all right?"

Without much more discussion, the tension in the room dissipated and the four of them sat down together.

"We need to know what we're dealing with," Jack said, eyes on Bill. "What are we fighting, exactly?"

"We?" Courtney asked. "You just sent the cops off with their marching orders, Jack. The job is done."

He shook his head angrily. "Bullshit. Oh, they'll make a mess of the place, kill a bunch of them, but this Tanzer was already planning his getaway. If he's the pack leader, I doubt they'll catch him."

Molly sat up a bit straighter. "That can't happen. He can't get away."

"He won't," Bill growled. "We'll make sure of it."

Courtney reached across the table to take his hand. "Tell us about them," she said.

"I wish there was more to tell," Bill said. "But unlike humans, we have no recorded history. No universities. No professors. Only oral tradition. Tales told to young ones.

"Prowlers have been around even longer than mankind. At first we had only one form, but as humans began to spread across the planet, we had to evolve to survive. We are not truly shapeshifters; we're just physical mimics of humanity. As you've already realized, we aren't any more difficult to kill than, say, a grizzly bear. The difference is that we can think. That's a devastating variable. How much more difficult would it be for hunters to kill a grizzly if he were clever?

"I suppose my kind are the source of the myths about werewolves, though of course we are not wolves at all. In the distant past our packs were enormous, but as the human population grew, they were decimated. They lacked a strong leader, one who could unite them. Scattered far and wide, they hunted as best they could in the hard lands and the mountains, in places where their savagery could be passed off as the work of true wolves, or in the cities, killing homeless people and runaways, the ones no one would miss.

"One of the most brutal of my kind was Wade Tanzer. Europe became difficult for his pack, and so he brought them to America when its natives still roamed the mountains and the plains. Before white men ever

set foot on American shores, Wade Tanzer led the largest pack then remaining. He was eventually killed, by a Sioux hunter, or so the legend goes.

"Tanzer had a son, Owen. He was not much to speak of, once upon a time—"

"Wait a second," Jack interrupted. "I'm missing something. You knew this guy?"

"Once," Bill replied. "But if it is indeed the same beast, he has evolved. What I have heard frightens me. Owen Tanzer wants to become greater than Wade was. He wants to unite the entire race, and to breed, and after that, who knows? I hesitate to guess."

Molly leaned toward Bill, arms on the table, staring at him as though her vision were out of focus. "But that was hundreds of years ago," she said. "If this Owen is the son of the original Tanzer, he'd have to be four hundred years old, at least."

Bill nodded calmly. He raked his fingers through his scraggly, graying hair. "That's not uncommon for my race. I knew Owen during the Civil War, and he was nothing more than a vulture then, preying on the battlefield dead."

Jack stared. "Jesus, Bill."

"How.. . how old are you?" Courtney asked.

The man—the beast they knew as Bill Cantwell— smiled. "Do you really want to know?"

"I do," Molly said quickly.

Bill had asked Courtney, and he waited for her answer. At length, she shook her head, eyes still wide with amazement.

"If you really want to know, ask me again and I'll tell you," Bill promised.

Then he returned his attention to Jack and Molly. "If this is really Owen Tanzer, and if he's evolved into a leader like his father, he can't be allowed to live."

'Agreed," Jack said. He stood up from the table. "That's why Molly and I are going to keep an eye on the lair. If the cops miss Tanzer, we'll make sure he doesn't get away."

Courtney leaned back in her chair and gave her brother an angry glare. "Just the two of you? I don't think so, Jack. Leave it to Castillo and his guys. They know what they're up against."

"Or they think they do."

Bill laid a comforting hand over Courtney's. "I'll keep them out of trouble. If it gets nasty, I'll—"

"Be here," Jack cut him off.

"Jack," Bill cautioned, "you don't know this beast. Guns, Tasers, whatever you want to bring, fine. Anything can kill him. But you have to surprise him or best him to do that, and, no offense, but I don't think you can do that. I'm coming."

"You're not," Molly replied firmly.

They all looked at her.

"Jack and Courtney love you, Bill. I've always liked you, but they're more inclined to trust you

than I am. Not that I think you'd betray us, but... I don't know if I can bet my life on that."

"You'll be in more danger if I stay behind," he told her.

"Maybe," Jack put in. "I'd be willing to trust you, Bill. But there's something more important I want to trust you with."

They all looked at him curiously.

Jack looked at his sister. "They've come after Molly and me twice now. They know where to find us, and there's a good chance they'll come back. They may even be out there right now, watching us." He turned to Bill. "I don't think I could survive if I lost her."

There was so much weight to his words, so much more he could have said. But he didn't have to. Bill understood immediately. Protecting Courtney was as important to Jack as destroying Tanzer, maybe more so. And it was obvious that Bill cared for her deeply as well.

"We'll all go," Courtney said quickly, as if she had seen where the conversation was going and wanted to stop it.

But even as she said it, her gaze dropped. None of them had to tell her that she could not go along, that she would be a liability to them.

"I'll stay," Bill said grimly.

Jack let out a long breath. "Good. Then we'd better get moving. We don't want Castillo to beat us there."

They all began to rise. Jack started to turn away when Molly spoke up. "I just have one more question," she said, a quaver in her voice.

Jack raised his eyebrows as he regarded her.

"Bill saw the Ghostlands when a soul came back to haunt him," Molly began. She chewed her lip for a

moment before continuing. "I just... Who did you see, Jack?"

He could not think of a response to that. He didn't want to lie to her after all they'd been through. But he had promised Artie he would not tell her the truth, and he understood why his friend's ghost had made such a request.