I spent the rest of the night making a plaster cast of my face and hands, since Dragomir didn’t seem particularly enthused about cooperating. At least I could demonstrate the utility of the silicone covering as an interim solution. I tested various thicknesses to identify the point at which it no longer provided the protection he needed, and eventually created one bigger than my face that could stretch over his head. It wouldn’t be an exact fit, but he was already creepy and spidery. A weird mask might add to the aesthetic and make him trendy instead of just weird? Who knew. With his fancy clothes and deep pockets, someone could get on board.
After that I finally admitted I needed to go to the grocery store, and dragged my ass into town to load up on food and energy drinks. Despite the expense, I gave in and bought a couple of trout from the meat counter and tossed them in for Hopper, in case he stuck around. The waterhound appeared and disappeared whenever he wanted. I didn’t particularly enjoy having a broken window and screen in the back of the cabin, but a dog door would look suspicious for someone who didn’t have a dog. At his size, I was better off just leaving the bottom half off the door instead of trying to cut out the appropriate width and height.
Other chores called around the house, since I’d neglected laundry and cleaning and cooking since I’d gotten out of the hospital. I went into the lab rooms a couple of times to fire up one machine or another to attempt and make progress one step at a time, with mixed results. A call to the hardware store went unanswered, so I requested an update on the generator on the ancient answering machine. Chances were Mr. Harrison was out fishing for the rest of the week, and someone would happen by eventually.
Another reason why I had to show some progress for Dragomir. I couldn’t demand his answers on Jamie without giving him something first. I started in the hole, since he’d saved my life, so quid pro quo only went so far.
I messed with dying the silicone to try and get more of a flesh tone, but that was an unnerving disaster and I ended up with floppy bits of red and orange and pink flesh all over the kitchen table. Hopper enjoyed it all immensely and tossed chunks of silicone to himself as he bounded around and knocked the couch over.
There didn’t seem to be any way to convince him to go back to his little creek in the woods, even though I enjoyed having him around. The company was nice, even if he was destructive as hell and kinda smelly. He burped in my face while I was sleeping and left more wet towels on the bathroom floor than Dad and Jamie combined. Still. It was nice to not be alone so much.
By the time Archer called mid-morning, I’d changed my mind about going at least a dozen times. If Dragomir could have traveled through the light, he probably would have killed me for thinking so much. But everything Archer said about werewolves the night before, as well as hinting they’d tracked – and probably killed – other cryptids, stoked my curiosity too much to allow something as measly as personal safety get in the way.
Which was how I found myself standing by another ATV near the trail we’d fled not too long ago with Archer and all his people ready to do it all again. They still had cameras, though they were front-facing body-cams and some go-pros, but the variety of weapons expanded beyond shotguns and Giselle’s crossbow.
Archer nodded to me but remained aloof and professional. “Good. We’re all here. It’s important to recreate the same conditions as closely as possible to lure the beast out again. We have snares set along the most likely approach routes and deadfalls to warn us if it is getting closer. There may be more than one. Call it out when you see something. We can’t afford to miss one. Everyone as tourniquets, Lars has the medic bag, Isidro has the silver.”
“Silver?” I frowned, looking around at them. “Does that actually work?”
“Yes and no,” Giselle said. She sounded tired but not bitchy, no longer annoyed by me for some reason. Which I found even more suspicious than if she’d stayed with the other attitude the entirety of our acquaintance. Things changed for a reason. Some signal passed through the system and changed the dynamic. And I didn’t like not knowing what that signal meant. Had Archer intervened? “Pure silver can disable them, but it’s too soft to actually use as a weapon. Silver bullets are hardened with an additive, usually nickel, which decreases the potency and overall effect.”
“So what do you do with it?” They all traded glances and my heart sank. Something awful, of course. I held my hands up to ward off the explanation they hadn’t even started. “Never mind. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see it. What am I supposed to do if something comes after me? Hide behind Ryan again?”
“Yes,” Archer said. He wasn’t joking.
I rubbed my eyes. Maybe a full night’s sleep would have been a good idea prior to traipsing through the woods on the hunt for a dangerous creature that already tried to kill us once. So much for being a genius. I needed to send my degrees back and write apology letters to all my professors. “Great.”
I wasn’t completely defenseless; I hadn’t lost all my senses. My knife and bear mace clipped to my belt under my jacket, just in case. Not that I expected it to do anything but piss off whatever attacked, but at least I’d feel better before I died.
Or turned into a werewolf and Archer had to kill me.
I paused as we got on the ATVs, doubled up so one person drove while the other person kept watch and prepared to shoot anything that moved. The forest remained calm and indifferent, squirrels still moving around and things rustling in the leaves. What if we made it back to the clearing where I’d meant to take them and we found another sasquatch? What if Archer and his team killed it thinking it was a werewolf?
Or maybe they’d kill it because it was a sasquatch, and that was enough for a death sentence.
I closed my eyes and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It wasn’t like I could stop them from doing it, but at least I had my phone and could take videos if I needed to prove what happened later. The park rangers might care that heavily-armed weirdos went around killing things that looked like man-bear hybrids.
My imagination ran off with me and started creating Mothman and lizard men and the Ozark Howlers and Jersey devils between the trees and hanging from the branches overhead. The rest of the team appeared more relaxed, but based on how they held their weapons and looked around, I suspected they were just good actors. It didn’t inspire much confidence that I’d survive.
The change happened slowly. We passed some threshold on the trail and things quieted. The squirrels and rabbits and other critters retreated. Birds sang softly, then not at all. My heart slowed but every beat felt heavier, like going from a regular guitar to a bass. Each thump-thump-thump rocked all the way through me. Nothing felt right, but I could not have said what changed.
I craned my neck to search the trees as we hit the end of where the ATVs could go, and slowly turned them for another quick getaway. When they cut the engines and started to get off, I looked around for Archer. “What the hell are you doing? We should go back.”
“Why? We haven’t found anything yet. There’s no indication the beast has returned; none of our traps are disturbed.”
“Maybe it’s smart enough to avoid them,” I said. My nerves twitched. I expected Dragomir to pop up out of a blackberry bush and shout “Boo!” at all of us. I turned in a circle to search more, my hands shaking, and cleared my throat. “Are you really sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s injured and out of control,” he said. Archer stepped closer and lowered his voice, squeezing my bicep. “It’s going to try to eat and bite anything it comes across. If it reaches town, it would be a blood-bath.”
“None of these have ever gotten to town before, right?” I couldn’t stop searching the trees. The air grew heavy and thick with anticipation. “And wouldn’t it make more sense for you to hang out closer to town to make sure the thing doesn’t go there, instead of chasing around out here to find it? The… thing could be on its way to town right now.”
“Why are you nervous?” Archer pulled me aside, his brows drawing together. His gaze searched my face. “What’s going on? Did you see something?”
I shook my head, retreating. “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t think we should be doing this.”
He studied me for some time, then took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll go down the trail a bit, to where it attacked us before, and if there still aren’t signs it returned, I’ll take you back to your truck so you can leave.”
“Why do you need me here for this?” I whispered. “I am not equipped for this sort of thing.”
“We don’t know what drew the werewolf last time,” he said slowly. “Something brought it closer to us. We need to re-create those conditions to stand a chance of finding it again.”
I didn’t entirely believe him. It sounded like a half-truth, though I didn’t know which part left me uneasy. Something about being bait didn’t sit right.
But I sighed. I still kind of wanted to see the werewolf again, knowing what it was and what to look for, and if Marie Curie could sacrifice her life to radium and polonium and end up radioactive even after death in the name of science… I could face a freaky wolf in the woods for a few minutes.
I reluctantly followed Archer and Ryan onto the narrower trail. Hugging myself didn’t help much as goosebumps covered me from head to toe. They moved slowly and confidently, scanning the surroundings. We got closer and closer to the creek, and my heart thumped faster. Please let Hopper have stayed at the cabin. Please let the sasquatch have stayed away, hidden in its nest. Or maybe have a bear waiting in the vicinity to scare the crew into fleeing.
I exhaled in disbelief. How was a grizzly bear the preferred animal?
Something moved at the very edge of my vision as we reached the clearing and Archer went to study the pool and the churned-up mud from Hopper’s near-death experience. I searched for whatever made the movement, my lips parted to breathe.
Lars said, “None of the snares are tripped,” and Isidro confirmed from the other side. Giselle said something about bait being untouched.
I shook my head. Their traps were too simple for relic hominids, or even a vaguely intelligent animal. Instincts counted for a lot, and for something to have survived grizzlies and mountain lions for more than a month or two in the mountains… They had to have good survival skills. The werewolf wouldn’t race around kicking over traps.
Before I could point out how underwhelming their plan was, Giselle said, “On your nine, Archer,” and everything changed.
Tension crackled. A growl cut through the silence. Gold-red eyes flashed through the undergrowth. A smell like rotting meat and wet dog permeated the clearing. I gagged until my eyes watered, and I retreated to the creek to give Archer’s team plenty of room to do whatever it was they did. The beast crouching in the undergrowth looked far closer to a wolf than a man as Isidro and Lars moved to flank the thing.
Maybe if I imagined watching it all on an interactive virtual reality simulator, it wouldn’t make my chest ache with fear and regret. This wasn’t right. Even if the cryptid was injured, maybe it could have been trapped and fixed rather than outright killed. I shook my head and gripped my bear mace.
The creek trickled by in an oddly cheerful tune as the werewolf leaped out of the trees and sailed over Lars to land in the center of the clearing. Its red gaze swept around, searching for a target, before it settled on Isidro and his limping gait as the unlucky one.
But by then Archer, Lars, and Giselle confronted it while Ryan hauled Isidro out of the way. They moved in a chaotic, violent ballet punctuated with shotgun blasts and rifle retorts. Lars cursed and the werewolf snarled, everyone scrabbled in the dirt that disintegrated into mud and then a sucking, cement-like trap.
Paralyzed, I only watched. I would have run for the ATVs but my knees wouldn’t unlock.
Something slashed in the water once, then twice. Three times. Four. An icicle slid down my back. My eyes closed and I whispered under my breath as my heart raced. Oh no no no. Like every horror movie ever made when you yelled at the screen for them not to go into the basement, knowing the horrors waited just behind the door.
I didn’t want to see what waited behind me. I didn’t want to see what made the heavy, moist panting as something else splashed, closer and closer. The tenor of the stream changed. I steeled myself. Just had to be brave. Just had to look and ask for help.
My hand shook around the bear mace but I flipped the safety off and made sure I knew where the business-end aimed. Spraying one’s self in the face with mace only guaranteed the bear got a meal with a little extra spice.
Time slowed down and the shouting around me retreated until I heard them through deep water, distorted and slow. I turned with the sickening disorientation of Dragomir’s time-pause trick. It took an eternity to finally look over my shoulder, and my mouth dried instantly.
Not just another werewolf. Not just two werewolves. Three.
Three werewolves.
Three werewolves crouched in the stream, creeping closer one paw at a time. Red and bloodshot eyes, broken teeth visible as their lips curled up in silent snarls, lank hair matted and reeking. I stared at them, searching for any hint of humanity or sentience in their eyes, but couldn’t unstick my feet to run.
“Guys…”
They continued calling directions to each other, fighting off the one crazed beast.
I cleared my throat. “G-guys.”
Someone said something that might have been my name or a question, but it slid by too softly for me to catch. The werewolves had frozen in place when I looked at them, but when nothing happened, they grew emboldened and eased forward once more. I could have sworn one grinned at me, tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, as it stalked through the rounded rocks on the creek bed.
“Guys,” I croaked. “Look the fuck over here.”
“Oh shit,” someone said, and an iron band wrapped around my chest to haul me back.
The werewolves launched forward as one and I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for death.