Chapter 34
The house was a ranch with brown clapboard siding and white shutters, set on a worn asphalt road on the edge of Draper.
It needed a fresh coat of paint, and the walk to the front door was cracked and sunken.
Winter-dry weeds grew up along the base of the garage door, flattened where someone had driven over them recently.
Two big trees stood at the sidewalk, branches bare, and leaves filled the flower beds and covered the lawn.
The windows were dark. The driveway was empty.
“If he’s here, he’s parked in the garage,” Jem said.
Tean nodded.
“Why don’t you stay out here?” Jem said. “I’ll take a quick look. You wait for Trevino and tell her not to shoot me.”
Tean swallowed. He patted himself down: glasses, wallet, phone, even the cargo pockets on his khakis. Everything still there. Everything ready. He had tried, this time, to come prepared. Then he shook his head.
“If he’s in there, I promise—”
“No.” Tean must have worked to soften the edge in his voice before he said again, “No.”
“We’re going to walk around the place first,” Jem said. “Get a good look. Then we’ll decide what we’re going to do.”
Tean nodded.
“Stay behind me,” Jem said. “Not too close. He’s fast.”
Tean nodded again.
Jem opened the door, and they got out. As they made their way up the lawn, leaves snapping and crinkling underfoot, he loosened the paracord around his wrist, transforming the bracelet into a long loop. The hex nut at the end swung with every step, thumping against his thigh.
They started on the right side of the house and passed an ancient AC unit. There was only a single window, small and high—probably a bathroom. A few scrubby bushes were planted along the foundation, and when the wind picked up again, they made scratching sounds against the siding.
More leaves covered the backyard—a thick drift, with a clear track running through it. Someone—or maybe more than one person—had entered the yard from the lot behind it, walked through the leaves without any attempt to hide the fact that they’d come this way, and headed straight for the house.
There were two windows on the back of the house: one set a little higher, which Jem guessed was above the kitchen sink, and the other larger, at the other end of the structure, probably the living room or a bedroom.
A sliding glass door caught the light and acted like a mirror, so that Jem couldn’t make out what was on the other side.
Kitchen, he guessed. Or a breakfast nook.
Something like that. A small patio extended from the slider, with a few wrought-iron pieces of patio furniture that had been spray-painted white once and had left rusted orange trails across the concrete.
Jem eased his weight forward.
Inside the house, a man said, “Do it!”
It wasn’t a shout. Not exactly. But it was loud. Forceful. Commanding. Someone who expected to be obeyed—and someone who wasn’t happy.
Without even looking at Tean, Jem felt him tense.
“Because I said so!”
The same voice. A man. It sounded familiar, but not enough that Jem could place it. Had he heard Zeb talk? Yes, he’d said something to Katie. But this wasn’t Zeb, or at least, that wasn’t the voice Jem remembered.
“Then get the fuck out of here!”
Too late, Jem realized what was happening.
The glass door slid open. A man stumbled out.
At least, Jem thought it was a man.
Boots. Jeans. Heavy work gloves. A man’s work shirt with a suede yoke, which meant it wasn’t really intended for working. And a wolf’s head.
It was a mask. Obviously. But it was a good mask. Realistic. The long brown fur looked real. The half-human features weren’t rubbery. The eyes had screened fabric in them so that it looked like a wolf’s eyes were staring back at you, and you couldn’t see the person behind them.
Shoulders hunched, the man turned back toward the house as though about to apologize or complain—respond in some way to the shove that had propelled him outside. And then he saw Jem.
Jem moved first. He shoved Tean backward, along the side of the house. Then he turned toward the wolfman.
A burst of speed carried him to the patio, across it, and within striking distance while the wolfman was still taking him in.
Jem didn’t even bother with the paracord.
He dropped down, set his shoulder, and hit the man hard enough to send him flying into one of the chairs.
Metal screeched. The man and the chair spun across the patio with a clatter.
The fall punched the air out of the man’s lungs, and then, with nothing left in his lungs, he tried to groan.
“What the—”
The voice came from behind Jem. He spun. Another wolfman. The same clothes, but nicer. A belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. And a knife dripping blood, held low at his side.
Jem lunged. He whipped the length of paracord, and the hex nut became a gray smear in the bright October day.
The man reacted instinctively, bringing up his hand to ward off the blow.
The hex nut connected with a loud crack.
Or maybe it was the sound of bones snapping.
The man screamed and fell back. The knife clattered to the floor.
Kicking off hard from the patio, Jem launched himself through the doorway.
The second wolfman was still stumbling back.
Still screaming. Jem caught a glimpse of a kitchen.
Behind the wolfman, a dark rectangle opened—stairs.
Jem drove his shoulder into the second wolfman.
Muscle and cartilage compressed against bone.
The wolfman’s feet left the floor, and he hurtled into the darkness of the stairwell.
A moment later came the thud of impact from below.
“What the fuck?” a man shouted.
Jem turned.
The kitchen was small, with parquet-print linoleum that was scuffed gray in places, white cabinets that still had dried paint drips on them, and a particle-board counter that had bubbled up near the sink.
The curtains in the window, white printed with watermelons, were yellow from grease and sun.
A brown Masonite table with metal banding took up the middle of the room, with matching brown chairs.
On the opposite side of the table was another wolfman, holding another bloody knife.
The wolfman stepped forward.
Jem kicked the Masonite table. He was so hyped up, it felt like it weighed nothing, and it skittered across the worn linoleum.
The wolfman tried to dodge, but the table hit him in the thigh, and he lost his balance and almost went down.
It was impossible to read the man’s face behind the mask, but the wolfman’s shoulders tensed, and he hobbled another step back, favoring the leg the table had hit.
“That’s right,” Jem said as he slipped one arm out of his jacket. He let it slide down his other arm and flipped the jacket up, and then up again, so that it wrapped around his arm in an improvised shield. “Come the fuck on!”
The third wolfman turned to run.
Jem shot after him. The wolfman paused long enough to kick one of the chairs into Jem’s path, but Jem hurdled it without breaking stride.
Out of the kitchen, into a tiny living room with a sofa and loveseat in matching orange-and-brown plaid, a lamp with a pleated shade, and a TV set the size of a small car.
The wolfman was running toward the front door, but he must have realized that he wasn’t going to beat Jem because he spun to face him.
The knife slashed the air. Jem closed in.
The knife slashed again, and this time, Jem turned it aside with the jacket wrapped around his arm.
He swung the paracord, the hex nut blurring—
And the wolfman caught the cord with his free hand. The hex nut lost its momentum and bounced harmlessly off his arm.
For a moment, they stared at each other.
The wolfman was panting.
Jem’s own breaths came deep and harsh.
Then he grinned.
He yanked on the paracord, pulling the wolfman off balance and toward him. And he head-butted the werewolf in the face.