Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) (17 page)

“Get away!”
she screamed. “Go!”

The wolf
growled at her, the rumbling coming from down deep, and it approached her one
step at a time, death in its gaze. Death and hunger. It ignored the screeching
Archer and faced her squarely now, coming closer.

Its eyes
glowed with some sort of evil light.

She fainted.

LUPO

The air
around the wolf seemed to blur, forming a narrow halo. The animal stepped away
from the mewling, bloody Archer, took several loping strides toward where she
was chained to the target, and in an eye-blink it became Nick Lupo again. He
was naked and sexually aroused. Over the years he had discovered (
all too well
) that the werewolf gene
multiplied normal sexual response and libido exponentially. But even though his
body was aroused, he himself felt nothing but horror at what the man curled up
on the floor had done, and what he had planned to do.

Honestly, he
wasn’t thrilled with what he and his Creature had instead done to the bastard,
but he had to pay.
He had to
.

“Jesus,
Jess!” he cried out, his mouth sounding cottony from speaking too soon. “Are
you all right?” He reached out for her.

He thought
he saw the ghostly figure of his friend Sam in the corner, but he ignored it.
Damn hallucination
.
Had to be.

Lupo
shivered, his human heart racing altogether too fast. After the DNA realignment
his eyes changed color and stopped their strange spinning, although his vision
was still slightly blurred.

His hands
reached her unresponsive body.

She was
crumpled over, chained in front of the archery target like in some bad circus
horror movie. Her hair was a cascade over her face and his next thought was
that she was dead. A freezing cold squirted through his veins and took the
breath from his throat.

Numbed, he
stared at her, looking for protruding bolts or other wounds.

But
something was wrong.

A puzzled
sound managed to escape his throat, a sort of grunted question as the details
started to become clear in the dim light. Behind him, the Archer was still
blubbering, his breath ragged and wheezy. He wasn’t dead yet. But he was dying.
Of that Lupo had no doubt.

Lupo hadn’t
reached Jessie yet, but now he cleared the last few feet in several quick
strides, something beginning to register in his lingering blood-haze.

Details
…

The woman’s
body size was wrong, he saw now, and her hair wasn’t exactly the right shade of
chestnut, even though it was dark. She was more petite than Jessie’s tall, athletic
and muscular body.

“Christ, oh
Christ,” he muttered as he reached her and gently lifted the top front of her
bent-over body and pushed her back onto the target. The hair parted and he saw
her face clearly for the first time.

“
Ashley!
”

Relief
flooded through his body like a hot, liquid wave. It met the frozen liquid in
his veins and made him unsteady on his feet. He shifted and felt bits of sharp
debris under his soles but there was no pain, for he was completely oblivious
to
 
everything around him except
the woman in front of him.

Ashley Johnson
, local
television reporter.

Who was
apparently out cold, but unhurt as far as he could tell.

Ashley Johnson. Not Jessie. Not Jess…

He
half-turned when he saw a flicker beside him. The ghostly figure was coalescing
there, just another reason to question his own mindset. He shrugged. Time for
that later.

He
manipulated the manacles, found they didn’t need a key, and released Ashley.
She fell into his arms and he caught her, her slight form almost child-like in
his grasp.

She groaned
softly as he tried to turn away from the archery target and lay her down on the
broken concrete floor, sweeping a small patch with a naked foot. As he
stretched her out gently, he looked for wounds but didn’t see any. He crouched
over her, unmindful of his condition.

Her eyes
fluttered. Found his.

Widened.

PREY

“Jesus,” she
gasped as her vision cleared. “Jesus, I’m still alive…”

She wondered
if it was even true, because she felt suddenly immeasurably weak. As if she was
fading into the distance.

“
Nick?
”

Her gaze
wrestled with the familiar face. Nick Lupo, homicide cop. Her friend on the
MPD, they’d formed a cooperative bond on numerous capital cases. Nick Lupo,
hunched over, staring into her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, to
thank him, to cry. She half-coughed as she tried to speak.

But then she
noticed he was… naked.

Could it be
him? Was she seeing things?

Am I hurt?

Why is Nick naked? And… excited?

Her eyes
widened as she looked at him and he noticed. He grimaced. “It’s a long story,
best not to ask. Are you all right? Did he—?”

“Ah,” she
half-groaned, regaining her voice now. “No, I don’t think he had time. But he
was about to… he was going to…” She shook her head. “And then there was this
animal
. Dog, monster dog. It was huge. It
came in and ripped the guy apart.”

She stopped
and tilted her head so she could look past the big cop at The Archer where he
lay.

“
Lupo!
” she said abruptly, tearing
herself away from the comfort of his arms. “We have to help him! Keep him alive…”

“Huh?”

“He’s my big
story. If he croaks nobody will know what the hell was driving him to kill.”

“He almost
killed
you
,” Nick the cop pointed
out.

She was
distracted by his nakedness, entirely obvious as he crouched over her. “Have to
try, Nick. You can arrest him, but I have to try and question him.”

“You mean
interview,” Lupo said, frowning.

“Whatever.”
She struggled. “Help me up. And, Lupo, get some clothes on!”

She didn’t
wait for his answer, but continued trying to get to her feet, starting with getting
to her knees. She was a journalist, she couldn’t avoid trying to interview the
man who had almost managed to kill her, especially if he was dying.

The people need closure
.

I need a great scoop, too.

She looked
around. “Where the fuck are we, anyway?”

Lupo grinned
humorlessly. “Couple blocks from the casino. Guy’s a real jokester.”

She managed
to wobble to her feet with Lupo’s steady arm to grasp. She couldn’t help
checking him out again, the large-framed and well-muscled body, the powerful
thighs, the surprisingly gentle hands. She checked his groin without too much
shame and wasn’t disappointed. If he was embarrassed, he didn’t show it, though
he seemed annoyed at her gaze. He had nothing to be embarrassed about, she
thought.

Shaking her
head to get herself back on track, she pulled reluctantly away from his grip as
he helped steady her.
Couple blocks, eh?
Maybe it’s possible
. She went to kneel near the man who had been The
Archer, only stumbling once. He was a mess and she couldn’t help flinching. He
writhed, muttering and crying, now much less frightening than when he had held
the key to her life and death. He was rather unimpressive, really, not much of
a super-villain at all.

She checked
him quickly, but the blood was pouring from several serious wounds, including
the stump of his arm. She was no doctor, unlike that friend of Lupo’s. But she
could spot the signs. The Archer was dying. The mauling was even worse than it
looked.

She wondered
about that dog – maybe some kind of a roving guard dog? And where had it
disappeared to? Did Lupo see what had gone down?

And why the hell is he naked?

The Archer’s
eyes fixed on hers as if pleading for help. She wanted to touch him, to
reassure him in a weird way, but she remembered very well how vicious he had been
only minutes before. And she wanted him to talk to her. Strength was returning
quickly, and with it her instincts. She nodded. “Hold on, we’ll get help. Tell
me
why
. Why did you want to kill
these people?”

As she spoke
to him, she got busy. She managed to rip a relatively unbloodied section of his
tattered shirt, and made a barely usable tourniquet for his mauled arm, results
of a long-ago first-aid course. It would slow the bleeding if nothing else.

“This is
it,” she said as she continued, “your chance to speak to the world. Why were
you driven to kill? Were they strangers? Why did you kidnap me? What’s your
message? What was your point in all this bloodshed? And why the crossbow?”

But his
ragged breathing hampered his speech, and even though he held her gaze with
feverish eyes, life seemed to be ebbing from his features.

Damn it, if I had my recorder. A camera guy
.

She stood.
The naked cop had edged closer, towering over her and the dying murderer, a
strange expression on his face. “Lupo, I have to go try and get him some help
– and a camera. You’re in no shape…”
So
to speak
.

“Ashley—”
he began, but she grabbed him.

“Listen to
me, Lupo! One of us needs to get this guy some help before he dies. That stray
dog really did a number on him. I want him on camera if I can manage, but if I
don’t get him some help it’s over. You can, huh, guard him until everybody
shows up. Anyway, I don’t know what happened, but you’re – well, you’re
naked, for one thing.”

Lupo nodded.
“All right, you go.”

She shrugged
and started to move, then stopped. She thought she saw something move in his
eyes. They seemed to be flicking through a color wheel, rolling in a weird and
impossible way. It had to be the light. She’d always liked the big cop’s
expressive eyes. They could be soft and sensitive, his eyes, and she’d always
kind of hoped he would see her, really
see
her… but now his eyes were cold and distant. They weren’t moving after all.
A trick of the light.

“Watch over
him?”

“I’ll read
him his rights. You’d better go, or it’ll be moot,” he said, glancing at the
wounded, wheezing wreck nearby.

She pleaded
with her eyes. “Keep him alive.”

“I promise,”
he said.

She gathered
her breath, took stock of all the aches and pains from her harrowing
experience, then found her way out of the warehouse. Outside, she stood to get
her bearings.
Lupo was right, this is
really close. That asshole!
Then she headed for the bright glow of the
casino building at a run, staggering a little over the crumbling concrete.

LUPO

He hated
outright lying to Ashley, even though she was a reporter and technically the
enemy. But there was a good chance this Archer guy would turn into a werewolf
if he survived Lupo’s bite. Wasn’t his duty – especially as a cop –
to the greater good?

And hadn’t
he just made a similar decision recently?

Explaining
this one might be much more difficult than the motorcycle gangbanger and
jewelry store robber had been. In his mind, that one had been more clear-cut.
Here, he was constrained by events. Ashley would be back soon with an ambulance.
He only had minutes, at best.

Ghost Sam
put in his two cents: “You know what you have to do, Nick.”

Lupo
snorted.

But real or
not, the ghost was right.

Lupo
approached the guy, whose body was trembling but who was staring at him as if
shell-shocked. It wouldn’t take much, seeing how the Creature’s first attack
had almost done the job right there. The guy was lying there, shivering, rheumy
eyes fixed on his, a look as unfathomable as the ocean. But there was some
smugness there, too. Lupo began to visualize his own change, the first step to
bringing the Creature to the fore, making the change, and throwing out the
trash here. But again, before he could continue, he heard Sam’s voice. “Ah,
Nick? Wait!”

Lupo swore.
Aren’t ghosts usually voiceless?
He
would have given anything for some good, old-fashioned chain-rattling and
howling. He shrugged.

And then a
further scraping sound behind him made him freeze.

A voice
behind him cried out: “
What the fuck?
”

It was
Charlie Black Bear, frozen in a two-handed stance in the doorway, his face
screwed up in an expression of bewildered surprise. The extended Glock wavered
in his grip.

Shit
.

“
What’s going on here?
Lupo?”

“Let me
explain,” Lupo said, painfully aware that he was buck naked and standing over a
badly wounded suspect. And now there was no Sam anywhere.