DAVID WATCHED THE wolves’ advance on Ballaro with growing dismay, so absorbed in the folly he didn’t notice the mud-matted nightmare to his right until it had nearly gutted him. He lurched backwards, feeling the sharp tug of its claws as they snagged his jacket, rending ribbons of ruined fabric that flapped flag-like in the steady breeze.
The world grew still and crystalline, its clockwork innards trundling in a glass housing. David could see individual molecules of air fold and part as he raised his pistol, chart the Rube Goldberg system of nerves and muscles and tendons ferrying commands from his brain to his fingertips, taste the sour tang of gunpowder undergoing its chemical changes, hear the tear-crunch-squish-sizzle of the bullet’s impact as distinct notes in a bitter melody. The bullet’s silver enamel, catalysed by whatever ungodly enzyme populated the wolf-thing’s cells, burned with the blinding intensity of magnesium. A snippet of Velvet Underground unspooled in some long-forgotten tape deck in the back of David’s subconscious, setting a hip soundtrack to the lunatic proceedings. (White light) White light goin’ messin’ up my miiiind. (White light) and don’t you know it’s gonna make me go bliiiiind . . .
The wolf-thing’s blood, tainted with Christ only knows what unearthly ichor, coated David’s right arm from cuff to collar. Bits of splatter pimpled his right cheek. A mix of howls and screams soaked the forest behind him, though David was too intent on the receding figures of Luka and Derek to turn and check on the fight. He saw-felt the holy flare of silver bullets meeting their targets, a light so brilliant its photons seemed to penetrate his cheeks and set them abuzz, suggesting at least a few of Ballaro’s boys had found the presence of mind to load up the right ammo. The air wafting from the shore stank of blood and cordite.
He followed the two men across the stream and into the forest. His last remaining silver bullet called to him from its silent black chamber. One good shot. That’s all I need. Give me Luka and keep the rest for all I care. Even that scumbag McCulloch.
David broke through the treeline at a run, shoulders hunched and arms tucked in to block the fusillade of branches. The hyper-awareness that had surged through him moments before leaked away. The world grew blurred and dim and runny, a wash of greens and browns. Flitting branches and crunching foliage lay a furry shroud over the subtler sounds of the forest, drowned out only by the mad jungle-drum pounding of his pulse.
After a slight but steady incline, the ground crested briefly before dropping down once again. David’s sprinter strides became vaults as the earth struggled to evade his feet. His momentum nearly threw him headfirst into a limestone protrusion. He caught himself inches before his jaw made contact with the ridge, sparing him several broken teeth. His fingers tightened compulsively, firing his last silver bullet into the treetops.
He stared with dismay at the bullet’s vanished trajectory. To have missed his shot would have been one thing, but losing this way was just too much. He leaned against the jutting stone. Urgency drained from him like air from a leaking tire. Moving forward seemed impossible; inertia’s chains hung too heavily. He remained that way for a while, slumped forward to fit in the tapered space between the mossy ground and the cantilevered outcrop of stone.
Voices slipped through gaps in the undergrowth, faint but audible.
“ . . . think it was farther back that way.”
“You don’t gotta direct me, bro. They’re my pack. I can smell ‘em like they’re right under my nose.”
David threw himself against the stone, wiggling into the crevice beneath its overhang. Matted wads of dirt sprinkled over him. He held the Beretta upward in the prescribed two-armed stance. Its barrel lay cold and firm against his cheek, the touch of a reassuring finger. His breath slowed until it flowed silent and without audible pauses, a cadence too low and constant to detect.
“What about the gunshot?”
“Probably echoed from the camp site. Don’t worry about it. We just—” Luka broke off. The sound of their footsteps ceased. David heard a sharp, inquisitive intake of breath. It came again, closer. “That you behind there, detective? We playin’ hide and go seek?”
David bit his lower lip. Knowledge of his gun’s uselessness burst to the surface of his mind, flailing and panicked. He knows you’re not armed! He’ll smell it on you! David thrust the thought down into the muck and drowned it. He remembered Walter as he’d last seen him, bleeding out atop an asphalt parking lot. Let him smell this, he thought. Let him take a whiff of how bad I want him dead.
“If we are, then I guess you called me out.” He stood, forcing every muscle fibre into a pose of contemptuous nonchalance. He told himself he had the upper hand until he actually half-believed it. Luka raised an eyebrow as David aimed the gun at his chest. Derek, half hidden behind Luka, drew a large revolver and pointed it at David.
“Not the best situation you’re in, bro. The moon’s callin’ to me, and you’ve seen what sort of piss-poor work a bullet does.”
“I’ve seen what lead does, yeah. I’ve seen what silver does, too.”
The right side of Luka’s mouth turned up in a coy demi-smile, pulling the pinkish weal of scar tissue on his face to canvas tautness. “Silver bullet, huh? Musta been one hell of a specialty shop sold you that.”
“Actually, they were a gift. Courtesy of one Frank Ballaro.”
“That so? I noticed you ain’t shot me with it yet.”
“Tell your buddy there to put the gun down and we’ve got a deal.”
“No chance,” hissed Derek.
Luka raised a dismissive hand. “I got this, bro.”
“I dunno if I agree with you there, Luka,” said David. “We’ve got a lot of dead on both sides here. And for what? Some petty turf war?”
“For vengeance. You know about vengeance, don’t you, detective? He murdered my babushka. Burned her alive. Can you imagine burning alive? What that musta been like?”
“You killed his sons. Tore them limb from limb. I’m guessing that was no picnic either. What good does more death do either of you?”
“Spare me your pacifist bullshit. I’m gonna see that dumb wop and everyone he ever cared about dead, and then I’m gonna take his town. There’s blood on all of ‘em.” His face drifted skyward. Moonlight infused it with a pale, sepulchral glow. His skin bulged and bent and pitted as horrid contortions worked beneath its surface. Shoots of grey-brown hair grew from every pore with time lapse urgency. Bones cracked and shifted like sheets of arctic ice. A shout became a shriek became a howl, a wretched umbilicus of sound that seemed to stretch to the darkness beyond the moon. Derek backed away from the abomination, revolver hanging stupidly at his side. David ignored the wail of every atavistic impulse to turn and flee, the collective cry of a million simian ancestors bending as one to such a primordial menace. He kept his pistol raised, but he knew in his heart it was just a prop. He would live or die by his words and his will.
An idea slithered through David’s muddied thoughts. He grabbed it and thrust it into the light. “You’re so worried about vengeance, why are you focused on some fat-assed bureaucrat who ordered a hit? Why aren’t you going after the man who actually did the killing?”
The question sliced Luka’s snarl in two. Its withered halves fell mutely to the ground. David laughed, a deep rolling chuckle that surprised him as much as it did Luka.
“You dumb Cossack piece of shit. You never stopped to think who might’ve actually put the torch to your grandma’s old folks’ home? You think it was Frank Ballaro out there with a can of gas and a lighter? Please. Who had the stomach—the gall—to do something that vile? Maybe a guy who made his living doing Ballaro’s dirty work? A guy who uses arson to take out targets and evidence right along with them? A guy who people call, I dunno, Matchbook McCulloch?”
Volchyin loomed huge and terrible. His growl shook snow from the treetops. Flames filled his pupils, onyx embers that burned darker than black. They seemed to swallow light, boundless apertures into which you could fall and fall and never reach bottom. His jaws gnashed. His muscles tensed.
Six gunshots crackled through the forest air. Every bullet found its mark. With the preternatural keenness of adrenalin, David witnessed the impact each made on the wolf-thing’s hide. The first four landed with all the force of BBs; the last two struck like cannonfire. Silver-white radiance hemorrhaged from entrance and exit wounds. The thing that had been Luka howled with rage and pain, back arching against the spears of light driven through it.
Derek stood with his legs planted shoulder width apart, the Governor cupped in both hands. He gazed down with almost clinical curiosity as the wolf-thing withered. Fur fell from it in clumps, and its skin made a slithering sound as it shrank back down to Luka’s less prodigious dimensions. When the body settled to its ruin, he looked up and cocked the barrel of the revolver towards David’s chest. David gazed back, unimpressed.
“You think I haven’t seen Dirty Harry? You fired six shots. That thing’s empty.” He held up his own automatic, wiggled it demonstratively. “Mine isn’t.”
“So you say.” Derek scratched his chin with the front sight of his pistol. “I saved your life, you know.”
“You saved your own life. He was coming for you.”
“Probably, yeah. But he would’ve gotten you first.”
“Probably,” David agreed. The wind stirred the branches overhead, sending a brief flurry of snow showering over the stretch of cold earth between them. “You did it, didn’t you? Burned Stanford Acres down?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. People died.”
“People die all the time, man. How many people died up here on your say-so?”
David had nothing to say to that. The whole conversation was pointless. He had Derek on any number of charges, attempted murder not the least of them. The man was a hired killer. It was his duty to bring him in.
David considered the pistol, its metal barrel prickling with cold. He slipped it back in its holster. Derek looked at him with a masterful poker face, betraying no expression.
“Go,” David said.
Derek paused, his head tilted slightly, and studied David’s face. He nodded once, to himself by the look of it, and tucked the Governor into the waistband of his jeans.
“Thanks.” He rubbed his hands together for warmth, blew into his cupped palms. Turning to leave, he nodded again, this time to David. “See ya.”
“Better if you don’t,” David replied. “For both of us.”