Game of the Wolf Page 3

  Even though Sara failed to shed light on the police officers’ questions, she received an answer to one of her own. Brady’s phone was indeed missing from the crime scene.

  As the questioning continued, Sara was tempted to tell these cops about the two messages she’d received from the killer, but something held her back. Perhaps she instinctively sensed that these officers of the law couldn’t protect her from the monster that was hunting her. The beast would tear through them in the same grisly way he’d massacred Brady.

  She was alone in this fight. No one could help her. One way or another, it would be over soon enough.

  The next day Sara received a new text from the wolf.

  This time from an unlisted. The smart bastard had ditched Brady’s cell before the cops could track it.

  Not surprisingly the text simply read 27

  The clock was ticking down. Sara was one day closer to death.

  Later that day, she checked herself out of the hospital and headed toward the exit in the borrowed sweat suit they’d given her. Her own clothes had been soaked in her husband’s blood, and she wasn’t going back to that cabin. Not for anything.

  A mob of reporters was waiting for her outside. Sara shielded her face to the best of her abilities as they hurled questions at her and snapped pictures.

  Somehow, she made it to the waiting Uber and told the stunned driver to take her to the nearest car rental place.

  An hour later she had a new set of wheels and hit the road.

  Sara was officially on the run.

  Chapter Six

  Day 23

  Time was running out way too fast for Sara. Five days had gone by since she dodged the reporters at the hospital, rented a car, and hit the road. She had no idea where she was going or what her next move might be. At this point, she was just trying to put as much distance between herself and the creature as possible. She would only stop for dinner or gas and just keep on driving.

  “The beast inside me has caught your scent. The wolf never loses a blood trail.”

  Let’s see about that, you bastard.

  Sara floored the pedal and roared down the endless stretch of highway. Denver’s mountains had given way to Arizona’s desert.

  Twice she thought she saw the wolf-like shape peering back at her from the stark landscape, eyes glowing menacingly.

  Damn, her mind was playing tricks with her. The beast couldn’t be out there in the middle of the day. There were rules to this crazy shit, right? Then again, maybe the thing wasn’t out there in a physical sense. Perhaps the creature was able to somehow project itself across time and space just to fuck with her head.

  The desert wasteland turned into a fiery red band, almost as if she was passing through Hell itself.

  After driving straight through the night and the next day, Sara realized she had to book a motel room somewhere and catch some sleep before she accidentally veered off the road. She opted for a Best Western.

  As she pulled her rental into the hotel parking, she warily glanced at the bruised sky. The deep streaks of red and purple felt like a harbinger of darker days ahead.

  Sara paid for her room in cash, and the clerk didn’t ask any questions.

  To her surprise, she was out cold within seconds of hitting the sheets.

  Waking up the next morning, she tackled the new day with a fresh burst of adrenaline. Sara refused to play around with the hotel’s coffee maker and instead planned to stop off at a Starbucks before she hit the freeway again. She’d earned a Frappuccino.

  The sun blinded her as she stepped out of her hotel room, she cast her gaze downward and… froze.

  Her face constricted with horror as she took in the dead rabbit sprawled at her feet, the mangled animal painting the floor in front of the hotel room door scarlet.

  The white fur against all that red blood jolted her to the core, and she fled to her rental car without officially checking out. She didn’t give a damn anymore.

  By the time Sara pulled onto the nearest highway, she’d lost all interest in hunting down a cup of coffee somewhere. As the endless band of asphalt unfurled in front of her against the stark desert landscape, she finally began to calm down. Sweat still coated her forehead, but she was loosening her grip on the steering wheel.

  Running hadn’t done her any good. The wolf had dumped the dead animal outside her room while she was out cold last night. He could have easily broken into her room, yet that wasn’t his plan. It wasn’t about killing her. Not today. No, the whole thing was a power play. He wanted her to know that he could have done terrible things to her in the night, but he’d chosen not too. After all, she still had a little more than three weeks left.

  “Why are you doing this to me? Why God damnit, why, why, why?”

  Her questions echoed as she blasted down the shimmering desert. Why indeed?

  There are predators, and then there is prey, the bastard had said.

  She was the rabbit. And she was being hunted by the big bad wolf.

  There was only one way this game would end.

  Dread etched deep in her soul; Sara stole a glance at her cell.

  There was a new text waiting for her, as there always was each new morning.

  As if she would lose track of time, the text reminded her that she had exactly 22 days to live.

  Chapter Seven

  Right Now.

  The Black Sheep. Nashland, Oregon.

  A Few Hours Before Sundown.

  Sara’s lips quivered as she wrapped up her recollection of events, her arms massaging her hunched-over shoulders.

  “I knew I couldn’t outrun this sick freak after the incident at the hotel. The wolf would find me, no matter where I went. For a moment there, I harbored fantasies of tracking him down before he could change into that monster again. But I’m not Nancy Drew, for God’s sake, I didn’t know where to start. I’m just a beautician. You need a haircut or a dye job, and I’m your gal. But this? No way.”

  Sara finally took a deep sip of her beer.

  “I bought a gun when I reached Phoenix. I thought I could somehow get my hands on silver bullets. Most gun shop owners just looked at me as if I’d lost my fucking mind. I was way in over my head.”

  Weylock wished there was some way he could comfort Sara, but he was a stranger, and she didn’t fully trust him yet. Thanks to the magic of the Necrodex, he’d known many of the details of her case. Still, hearing Sara’s story from her lips had hit him hard.

  The last thirty days would have pushed anyone to the brink. The rabbit incident had just been the beginning. There had been more harassing phone calls and texts, all sent from unknown numbers. But even though she was terrified, Sara still tried to find ways to fight back, to defend herself. She was one brave woman.

  Weylock’s anger simmered. This monster’s victims had all been newlyweds. He liked to destroy young love. And his MO was always the same. Kill the husband on the first night. Play his devilish game for one long month with the wife before he struck again on the next full moon.

  Fucking bastard.

  Weylock liked to think of himself as hardened by experience. But the diabolical streak of this beast brought his blood to a boil.

  His work as a profiler had taught him that most serial killers were sadists, but they generally tortured their victims and then dispatched them relatively quickly.

  Perhaps the Dahmers and Bundys of the world would have loved to terrorize a victim for one long month, but they understood they could never pull it off.

  This killer was more than an ordinary serial killer, though. He was a werewolf. A creature of darkness. A beast with powers and abilities that allowed him to play his terrible game on a whole different level.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Sara. I know your husband was a good man.”

  Sara shook her head, fighting back tears. “Why am I even telling you all this? Who are you really?”

  It wasn’t the first time someone had asked him that question. Most times, he dodged it
. Not today.

  The woman was at her rope’s end. This wasn’t the time to leave her hanging. Even a partial explanation would help put this experience in some sort of context.

  So Weylock started to talk.

  “Two years ago, I was just a regular guy. Well, a regular guy who hunted serial killers for the FBI.”

  Weylock flashed her a smile, and the corners of her mouth ticked upward.

  Sara took another sip from her beer, and suddenly, Weylock wished he’d ordered an Americano last time the waitress checked on them. Asking questions was far easier than answering them.

  “My last big case changed my life. Kind of the same way the death of your husband changed yours. Until that point, I thought I understood evil. I knew what made the monsters tick. You meet a psycho killer for the first time, and you’d think you were talking to the devil himself. But if you turn your attention to a criminal’s past, the pieces always came together. Bad parents, years of abuse, a head of bad wiring. But then, one day, I encountered evil that couldn’t be analyzed or rationalized or explained away. Evil where the pieces just didn’t add up. And it nearly killed me.”

  Sara’s eyes were huge and round. “What happened?”

  “Like yourself, I came face to face with a monster. What I saw couldn’t be unseen. The world wasn’t the place I thought it was. So, I quit. And started looking for answers.”

  “How did that go?”

  Weylock smiled.

  “You know what they say. For every answer, there are always more questions.”

  Weylock inhaled deeply. He was deliberately leaving out certain crucial details, but that was okay.

  Sara didn’t need to know about the demon who’d taken possession of him back in NYC, and who’d murdered his wife. Nor did she need to know about the two long years he’d spent as a patient at the Italian monastery battling the demon for control of his soul.

  Weylock already sensed he might have revealed too much. But something about Sara’s loss resonated within him, echoed his own grief.

  “I can’t tell you more, Sara. But ever since that day, I’ve dedicated my life to destroying things like the one that murdered your husband.”

  She hunched her shoulders. “There are more werewolves?”

  “There are monsters in this world. And I try to protect the world from them. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Sara stared at him. His words confirmed that the world was a far more dangerous place than she could have ever imagined.

  “I know you’re not crazy. Your monster is real, Sara. And I plan on killing the beast for what he did to you and your husband and all the other poor people he’s tortured and murdered.”

  Sara fought back the tears welling in her eyes. Then she said something that truly surprised him.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Weylock watched her for a moment, then finally nodded solemnly and said, “I need your gun.”

  Sara stared at him with incomprehension.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Weylock’s eyes narrowed into slits.

  “Every trap needs bait.”

  Chapter Eight

  Today. Nashland, Oregon.

  The camper van pulled into the empty strip mall and parked in front of a restaurant sandwiched between a drycleaner and a Wells Fargo. The establishment’s colorful sign read Nashland Avenue Family Restaurant and promised, in small print, Greek, Italian, Mexican, and American Cuisine.

  They should have just called it Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Ali Silver thought.

  In his dining experience, the longer the menu, the crappier the food. But as long as they had something that bled, he would be okay.

  Silver couldn’t care less about gyros or pasta or burritos. He was a devout follower of the carnivore diet and only consumed meat products, preferably thick juicy slabs of beef or lamb cooked extra rare. He’d been on the road for too many hours, and his stomach craved sustenance. And even though he planned to feast like a king later tonight, he needed a small appetizer to tide him over.

  Silver slipped on his Wayfarer shades before getting out of his 19-foot Simplicity SRT, his home on wheels.

  Silver was a nomad. He hadn’t held a permanent job or residence since gaining access to his two-million-dollar trust fund five years earlier on his thirty-first birthday. Once he became financially independent, the road had beckoned, and he’d happily answered the call.

  He must have logged over 40,000 miles by now and been around the country so often that he’d lost count. Now, his wanderlust had some limits—he wasn’t on the go non-stop, and he did set down roots occasionally. The most recent example was Venice Beach, where he’d kept his RV parked near the ocean for three blissful months. Good times. But eventually, he always felt the need to start moving again.

  To hunt for fresh meat, so to speak.

  It was a lifestyle that suited his personality and his peculiar appetites.

  Ali Silver was a serial killer.

  Before he’d inherited his fortune, he’d held down a job as a bookkeeper. The mundane life had left him hesitant to satisfy his dark desires. Fantasies of murder consumed his daydreams, but he never—okay, rarely—indulged them.

  At work, he was as personable as possible. He maintained the charade well enough that his coworkers liked and respected him, even though none of his so-called friendships extended beyond the workplace. During those long years, he constantly felt constrained and emasculated—a man forced to bury his actual personality under a mask of platitudes and fake smiles.

  By the time Silver celebrated his thirtieth birthday, he’d only murdered two women. A hooker in Cabo, whom he strangled while on vacation, and a stripper in Vegas he’d picked up on the strip and whose remains were buried in the Nevada desert.

  And then there was the third girl who changed everything for him. He hadn’t killed her with his own hands, but his actions had led to her death.

  So perhaps she counted after all.

  In those dark, pre-trust fund days, the income of his bookkeeping job had barely paid the bills, much less allowed him to travel to far-flung places. Killing near his home was a no-no. Silver had watched enough police procedurals on TV to learn a few tricks. During those miserable years, he saw himself as a wild animal more than a man. Silver knew all too well what happened to untamable beasts in captivity.

  They lost their edge. And died.

  For years, Silver bided his time and waited for his moment, trapped, unable to embrace his true self. He might have rotted away in his hometown of Bradenton, Florida, for the rest of his life if it hadn’t been for Aunt Martha and the money she left him. Thank God for rich aunts with misguided affection for their sole nephews.

  By the time Aunt Martha died—of natural causes, thank you—Silver was desperate. The need to take his obsession to the next level was getting stronger, so the timing of the financial windfall was perfect.

  Within weeks of receiving the first payment, Ali Silver quit his job, ended his lease, and purchased his RV. This was his chance to indulge his passions and become the man he always dreamt of being. Free to go wherever the spur of the moment took him, Silver gave in to his lethal impulses without fear of discovery.

  The next three years were a blast. Honestly, he didn’t think life could get better.

  Then he met the wolf. And he graduated from killer to apex predator.

  Thinking about the wolf turned his thoughts to Sara Thwaite. He’d waited for tonight for thirty interminable days. Weirdly, this month had felt longer than the rest. There was something about a woman’s grief and desperation that got him all hot and bothered. But Sara—she was delicious. She had led him on quite the merry chase, and although Silver had enjoyed every minute of it, he had also grown increasingly impatient to get his hands on her.

  Anticipation of the night ahead quickened his pulse and put a bounce in his step as he entered the establishment. The décor of the place matched the cheesy sign that greeted hungry
customers outside: garish colors, cheap-looking tables, and rickety chairs.

  Silver caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirrored wall. The world saw a plain man approaching middle age with the requisite receding hairline and growing paunch.

  Silver only saw the beast.

  Instead of being five-eight and 180 pounds, he was now a seven-foot-tall, beast weighing in at over three hundred pounds of pure muscle. Nails worn down to the quick became razor-sharp claws, his coffee-stained teeth transformed into menacing fangs. The squinted eyes behind the round glasses morphed into slits that gleamed with an eerie emerald light.

  The savage beast staring back at him was his true face, not this pathetic shell of bone, muscle, and fat he presented to the world.

  After he’d become the wolf, Silver had done some reading. In most of the books, the werewolf was a tragic character. A man doomed to become a monster. As much of a victim as the poor souls he ended up devouring while in his true form. They even called it a curse.

  One thing was for damn certain—Ali Silver didn’t feel cursed.

  He’d embraced the wolf with open arms.

  They were the two halves of the same coin. Two monsters with similar appetites. He stalked and tracked the prey, while the beast did the killing. Together they were stronger. Deadlier. The perfect duo.

  Silver took a seat, scanned the menu, and settled on a New York strip steak. He didn’t want to overdo it—best to save some room for the real treat of the evening.

  The waitress raised an eyebrow when he ordered it extra rare and declined the complimentary sides, but he didn’t care what some small-minded bitch thought. No one would spoil his special night.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was devouring his bloody piece of meat. Ideally, he would have consumed it raw, but he had also learned not to draw undue attention to himself. This philosophy had worked for him back when he slaved away at his bookkeeping job in Bradenton, and he still applied it to this day.