Shadow of the Moon (2 page)

A load off my mind. I hated it when the
beasties got too close to small, helpless things. Nothing ever went
very well after that.

But while I was glad the facility was psych
only, I also found it odd such a hospital existed way out in the
wilderness. Before the sudden outbreak of the crazies, who had
inhabited all those beds?

The building was surrounded by thickset
evergreens, not unusual in this part of the country. Smaller towns
were often the remnants of lumber camps, which had sprung up in the
middle of mammoth forests.

Such forests were where the wolves lived, and
because of that isolation oftentimes no one noticed the beasts were
becoming more numerous, more aggressive and a helluva lot smarter
until it was too late.

The parking lot was full of cars, but there
was no one at the reception desk to greet us. Weird. Places like
this always had a receptionist, if not a security guard or two.

“Hello?” Will called.

No one answered.

“Hey!” I shouted. “A little help here?”

Still nothing.

We frowned at each other, and I jerked my
chin to the right, indicating Will should go one way. I went the
other.

Only empty offices lay down my corridor. I
guess that made sense. The patients wouldn't be easily accessible
to anyone walking in off the street. Like me. They also shouldn't
be able to walk out the front entrance, just by walking a few feet
down the hall, although I was starting to wonder if they had.

I glanced at Will. He’d reached the end of
his corridor. He lifted his hands then lowered them. Nothing on his
side either. We met again at the receptionist desk.

“What do you think?” I peered at the glass
door straight ahead.

The entrance held a huge lock that appeared
to need both a key card and a code to open. The glass was tinted.
We couldn’t see anything in there. I wondered if they could see us
out here. If
they
were even in there at all.

“Doesn’t hurt to try.” Will skirted the
reception desk and bent over, squinting at the security box.
Apparently he'd left his glasses in the car. “I can probably figure
this out.” He straightened. “I’ll need my computer.”

“How about I just break the glass.”

He tapped his knuckle against it. “Appears a
little bulletproof.”

“Why on earth would they have tinted,
bulletproof glass for a clinic in Tiny Town, USA?”

“I have a feeling they don’t want what’s on
the other side to get out.”

“Or maybe they don’t want any of us to get
in.” My fingers itched. “That just makes me want to.”

Will grinned. “One of the things I love about
you," he said, then ran a hand over my short, non-descript
hair--neither blond nor brown but something in between

“Uh, yeah.” I still wasn’t used to his easy
and numerous declarations of love. Maybe someday I would be, but
I’d never been loved before, and I knew instinctively I never would
be again in the way that Will loved me.

Utterly. Completely. No matter what. For
always.

“Why don’t you get your computer? I'll wait
here.”

Leaning over, he brushed his lips across
mine. In our business, we never knew when simple chores, such as
retrieving a computer from the car, might separate us forever.

He didn't bother saying
be right back.
We tried not to make promises we weren't sure we could keep.

With Will gone I got antsy. I’d never been
very good at waiting, was even less adept at keeping my hands to
myself. I searched the papers on the desk and found nothing
interesting--schedules, insurance info, not a word about
boxenwolves
anywhere. A tap on the computer keyboard did not
bring the screen to life. I would leave that for Will.

Wandering back to the tinted glass door, I
shrugged and tried the knob. It twisted.

“Uh-oh." I set my free hand on my gun.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped then scowled at Will. “What did I
tell you about sneaking up on me? Make noise like a normal person
would.”

“Normal white person. Indians move like the
wind.”

I rolled my eyes but didn't argue, because he
did. “We forgot the first rule of breaking and entering.”

“Which is?”

“Try the knob first.” I pushed, and the door
swung open.

The corridor beyond was brilliantly white and
glaringly empty. Every door gaped wide. I didn't like it, but I
took a deep breath, drew my weapon--who knows how fast whatever we
might encounter could move--and said, “Let’s go.”

Will set his computer under the
receptionist’s desk and followed. He left his weapon in its
holster. He’d never been very good with it. Will Cadotte was much
better at hand-to-hand.

As we moved down the corridor, every room not
only appeared empty but, upon further checking,
was
empty.

“Maybe everyone got better,” Will
murmured.

“Then where are the doctors, the nurses, the
janitors? Whose cars are those in the lot?”

“Got me.”

I liked this place less and less the longer
we were there. Each room had been lived in, if you could call being
incarcerated in the equivalent of a padded room “living.”

I pointed to the camera in the corner of the
hallway. “There has to be a security office somewhere.” The red
light was on. Tape was rolling.

“I saw cameras in all the rooms, too,” Will
said. “Wonder what that was about.”

“To keep track of patient care, or lack
thereof. We need to find the other end of all those seeing
eyes."

As we'd checked every room, every closet,
every nook and cranny on the main floor, when I found the door that
led to the basement, I started down without hesitation.

“Hold on.” Will laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Do you
watch
scary movies?”

I glanced up. The bright light from the hall
flared around his head, casting his pretty face in shadow. “Why on
earth would I
watch
a horror flick when half the time I'm
living
in one?”

“The most important rule forgotten by stupid
heroines everywhere is: Don't go in the basement.”

I hated being called stupid almost as much as
I hated being called a heroine.

“I’ve got a gun.” I lifted the weapon.

“You always do. How many times has a gun been
useless against the monster du jour?”

More than I cared for. Still— “We can’t just
leave. You want to tell Edward we were too frightened to go in the
basement?”

He took a deep breath then let it out. “You
could tell him.”

"No thanks." Edward was often scarier than
anything we uncovered on the job.

Will fumbled behind me, and light flared
above and below us.

“See.” I gestured with my gun. “Nothing scary
down here.”

Although I had to say that the extreme
cleanliness was disturbing. Didn't all basements have their share
of cobwebs, dust and rats? Apparently
not
the basement of
the Riverview Psychiatric Clinic.

I reached the bottom of the steps and was
blinded by the brilliance. Everything was painted white--floor,
ceiling, walls, doors. There were two. I opened the first, leading
with my gun. The lack of light in front of me after having so much
behind me made me blink. Nothing jumped out and said "Grrr." All I
heard was the low rumble of machinery.

“Furnace,” Will said.

The second door revealed what we’d been
searching for--the security office--also darkened so the screens
were easy to see. The place was empty as the rest of the building.
The echoing silence and shadowy atmosphere gave me the urge to
tread lightly and whisper. I guess that wasn’t a bad thing.

“Check all the screens,” I murmured.

One glance and my unease deepened. While we’d
been inside, dusk had fallen. As previously mentioned, bad things
happened after the sun went down.

"We'll need to pull up what was recorded in
the last twenty-four hours.”

Will nodded, heading to the left while I went
to the right. It only took me an instant to locate the camera we
were looking for. “Hell,” I muttered, and Will immediately joined
me.

The apparatus had been mounted on the rear
wall of the hospital and pointed toward the forest. I understood
why. Any security issues approaching from that direction would come
out of the trees. Any escaped prisoners—uh, I mean patients—would
head directly for them.

So, were the beings emerging from the
evergreens formerly patients or upcoming security risks?
Considering they loped in our direction on four paws, it didn't
really matter.

“Wolves,” Will murmured. “A lot of them.”

“Mmm,” I said, not bothering to count once I
hit a dozen. I didn’t have enough bullets to kill them all. Who
would have thought we’d be attacked by a herd?

I should have. It had happened before.

Inching closer to the screen, I squinted in a
vain attempt to see their eyes. Were they wolves, werewolves or
something completely new and different? Hard to tell from here.

“Let’s go."

“I don’t suppose you mean home?” Will
muttered.

“Do I ever?”

He sighed, but he followed me from the
security office, down the hall, up the steps, then toward the back
door. As we went, we checked our guns.

“Not enough bullets,” Will said.

“Make them count.”

“Then what?”

I patted the pure silver knife at my waist.
“Then you get behind me. Find a room with no windows. Lock it.”

“Shouldn’t we call Edward?”

We’d reached the rear entrance to the clinic
where a bank of glass overlooked the trees. “Too late.”

Dozens of wolves blocked the exit. Darkness
threatened, but there was enough light left to reveal their
eyes.

They weren’t human.

“They’re just wolves,” Will said.

“Maybe.”

They weren’t behaving like wolves. They sat
in a semi-circle, patient, more like well-behaved dogs expecting a
treat than wild animals, their attention focused on the windows but
not on us. They were waiting for something, or perhaps,
someone.

“We can’t shoot them,” Will continued.

“No?”

“No,” he said firmly.

As a member of the wolf
clan, Will had a soft spot for the species. According to Ojibwe
legend each clan member--
bear clan, badger clan, stork clan
and so on--
was a descendant of the clan's totem
animal. Which would make Will part wolf. However, since many of his
relatives had started to slobber and slaver and chase us everywhere
we went with the intent of killing us, he'd changed his opinion a
bit.

"If they're really wolves," he continued,
"they're endangered."

Not too long ago, the wolves had recovered
enough in Wisconsin to be taken off the endangered species list,
but recently they'd been put back again. This might have something
to do with Edward's penchant for shooting first and discovering if
the beast were wolf or werewolf later. I preferred Edward's way of
doing things myself, but Will--being Will--disagreed.

Somewhere in the clinic a bell chimed—soft
not harsh—if the place hadn’t been as silent as the proverbial
tomb, we wouldn’t have heard it.

Outside, the wolves cocked their heads then
got to their feet and advanced. A chill wind seemed to swirl
through the hall, though not a window, not a door, was open.

The way the animals moved--in tandem, exactly
the same--freaked me out. They resembled computerized wolves on a
movie screen, one wolf cloned over and over. If it weren’t for
their physical differences—brown, black, ash, white, auburn fur—I
would think they
were
clones, which would
be another problem entirely.

As the wolves neared the clinic, Will
tensed.

“They can’t get in,” I said. “No thumbs.”

Doors were a problem for the quadrupedal.
Thank God.

“I doubt that’s going to be an issue much
longer.”

The outlines of the beasts shimmered in the
half-light, becoming indistinct, then solidifying again. Each time
they reshaped a little differently. Within minutes the back door
opened and dozens of people filed inside.

Stark naked, but they didn’t seem to mind,
probably because they didn’t seem to know. They moved with a
shuffling, zombie-like gait, and as they did they repeated the word
"
boxenwolf
" like a litany.

I lifted my gun; Will shoved it back down.
“You can’t.

“You saw them shift. They’re werewolves.”

“Are they?”

Before I could stop him—he’d always been
quicker than spit—Will snatched my knife and laid the flat of the
blade against the nearest person’s arm. I winced, expecting smoke,
flames, screaming agony—the usual response when silver touched a
werewolf in any form--but nothing happened.

Will flipped the knife end over end, catching
it nimbly by the blade and handing it back to me with a quirk of
his brow that very clearly mimed,
Told you so.

Lucky for him, he didn’t say it.

“Hey!” I set the heel of my hand against the
nearest naked chest--a middle-aged guy with an impressive spare
tire. “What’s your name?”

“
Boxenwolf
,” he replied, and took
another step.

“Hold on a second.” I kept my hand right
where it was,

The man didn’t even glance my way before he
shoved
my
chest so hard I flew several feet
and crashed into the nearest wall.

“Damn.” I shook my head, freezing mid-shake
when pain rocketed through my eye sockets and settled in my back
teeth. Every time that happened, it hurt.

“You okay?” Will stood over me, concern in
his eyes. But he knew better than to fuss. Or help me up after I'd
been knocked down. That only made me feel more of an idiot.

“No.” I clambered to my feet, rubbing at the
sore spot on my chest. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”