Chapter 35
Tean stumbled backward. Jem’s shove had caught him off balance, and he almost fell. As he was still catching himself, a shout came from around the side of the house, then the screech of metal, a thud, a scream.
When he cleared the corner of the house, Jem was already moving toward a sliding glass door, the paracord whipping through the air.
At the far end of a small patio, an old-fashioned chair lay on its side, and a man was tangled with it.
The man wore a wolf mask, like something from Halloween.
The fall had obviously stunned him, but he was starting to stir.
A scream came from the house, and a moment later, a crashing thud.
Tean had a glimpse of Jem’s back, framed in the doorway, and then Jem turned left and disappeared.
The man on the ground was trying to get his leg free, propping himself up on one elbow.
Tean jogged over to him. The wolf’s head looked up at him. The snout was bent to one side from the fall, and blood—what Tean suspected was real blood—mottled the latex.
“I’m so sorry,” Tean said and kicked him in the head.
The man dropped down.
Tean bent to check. He was still breathing.
The scraping shriek of something sliding across linoleum came from inside the house, and then a crash, and the sound of running footsteps.
When Tean got to the kitchen, he paused to orient himself: a doorway directly ahead that opened onto a flight of stairs; a closed door to his right; to his left, a Masonite table that had been pushed up against an ancient Amana side-by-side; a chair overturned on the floor.
From the front of the house came the sounds of struggle.
Tean started to turn toward the sounds. And then he saw the blood.
A trail of it led from the stairs and passed beneath the closed door to Tean’s right.
Daniel.
He tried the door, and the handle turned. His eyes followed the trail of blood over sea foam-green tile, streaking up and across the side of the tub, and ending at what had once been a human being.
A shout—Jem’s shout—came from the front of the house.
Tean barely heard it. He was still in the little clapboard rambler. Still staring at the gory mess in the tub. But he was back in that little cabin, too. Back in a canyon. At the end of the world.
He made himself step forward—over the bloody smear on the floor. His hands were trembling, and he put his hands on the doorjamb to steady himself. His watch thumped against the partially open door.
It—he—had been male. What was left of his genitals was propped between his legs on a bar of soap, like some bizarre sculpture. The clinical part of Tean’s brain, the part that dealt with animal carcasses all the time, took over. It was like stepping into a cold room.
Male. Cuts and stab wounds covered—at Tean’s conservative estimate—ninety percent of him. Circular burns. Broken fingers and toes. Between the streaks of dried blood, dark hair was visible on his legs, chest, and arms.
The face matched the picture Tean had seen of the man called Rydel Owens. The scruff. The mustache. The freckles.
Something loosened in Tean’s gut, and for a moment, he thought his knees might fold.
Not Daniel.
It wasn’t Daniel.
A scream from the front of the house.
The crash of breaking glass.
Tean took out his phone and placed a call to 911. When the dispatcher answered, he said, “There are men in my house trying to kill me,” and he gave the address. He put the phone in his pocket without disconnecting.
A door on the opposite side of the small bathroom connected with a bedroom.
A queen-sized bed without a frame had been placed under the only window, and the October sunlight turned the dust white: a thick layer of it across the dresser, on the mirror, even on the aluminum blinds.
A few framed pictures were lined up on a box next to the bed—an improvised nightstand.
Tean glanced at them, but he didn’t recognize any of the people.
On the wall, in bloody letters three feet high, someone had written GROOMER.
Another door led him into a short hallway. Two doors led off it, and then the hallway continued toward the front of the house. Labored breathing, grunts, the unmistakable thump of a body hitting a wall.
You have to help him. He needs your help.
But Tean felt like he was moving inside a dream.
He was here. He was awake. He was noticing a streak along one wall that he’d taken for shadow and now, he realized was more blood.
He was turning the handle on that door, and he was opening the door, and he was stopping because the door was stuck—blocked by something heavy, soft, unmoving on the other side.
And, at the same time, he was in that little cabin, with the smell of water and salt-cedar and the gun glued to his hand.
He put his shoulder to the door and forced it far enough that he could slip his head in.
A bedroom. Two twin beds with train-pattern quilts. The closet doors had been taken off their tracks.
Two bodies on the floor. Covered in blood.
He recognized Van Cleave’s little chin puff. That was how he figured out who it was, because the features were otherwise unrecognizable; the side of his head had been smashed in. The smaller, darker figure that lay facedown had to be Trevino.
Daniel.
The other door led to another bedroom. The bedding was a simple neutral. There was a desk and a dresser. The closet doors were still on their tracks, but open to show shirts and pants hung neatly by color. A phone charger. An iPad. A glass of water.
Where was Daniel?
From the front of the house, Jem’s breathing sounded labored now. Exhausted.
He had to find Daniel.
Tean retraced his steps to the kitchen. The stairs were still dark.
He almost closed his eyes; he saw the barn, the kennels.
A little switch at the top of the stairs made a clicking noise when he flipped it, but no lights came on.
He took out his phone. A tinny voice on the speaker reminded him that someone was still trying to talk to him, but he ignored the voice and turned on the flashlight.
At the bottom of the steps lay one of the wolfman. Akimbo, that was the word for it. Arms and legs spread out like he’d tried to catch himself at the end of the fall. Head turned to one side. One yellow wolfman eye stared up at Tean, unblinking.
On the kitchen’s worn linoleum lay a bloody knife. Tean picked it up.
Treads creaked under him as he made his way down.
He slowed near the bottom, watching the wolfman for movement, a surprise.
The light bobbed back and forth because he couldn’t keep his hand still.
In the wandering light, he saw another bank of switches.
He had to stretch past the wolfman to flip them on, but the wolfman didn’t move.
Lights groaned and buzzed on. Flickering snaps of light: the washer and dryer; the furnace; a stack of cardboard boxes sagging under their own weight.
And then the lights steadied, and somewhere, a boy whimpered.
“Daniel?” Tean said. His voice cracked. “Daniel? Can you hear me? It’s Tean.”
“Uncle Tean? I’m here! I’m back here! I’m here! I’m here!”
Tean took the final step down, holding on to the rail to swing himself over and past the fallen wolfman. The floor here was a concrete slab, and the soles of his Keens squeaked as he made his way past the furnace and toward the far corner of the house.
It was a kennel: black, shining where the light touched it. Daniel knelt inside it, hands clutching the wire panel. He had a bruise on one side of his face. He was terrified. To judge by the smell, he’d had to relieve himself in the cage. But he was alive.
Daniel was making noises—not quite words, but groans, like the combination of strain and relief were too much for him to handle anymore. He rattled the panel as though trying to pull it free, and scrapes and scratches showed where he’d hurt himself trying to escape.
“Hey,” Tean said. “It’s okay. We’re here. You’re okay.”
He crouched in front of the kennel and set down the phone and the knife.
His hand was tacky with drying blood. A padlock and chain secured the kennel’s door.
Tean examined it. If he had a pair of bolt-cutters, he could get the chain off.
For that matter, if he had a pair of pliers, he could probably just pry out a section of the panel and take the whole door off.
He was starting to think of how to tell Daniel that he had to go find some tools—had to go help Jem, his brain hollered at him—but before he could, Daniel screamed.
The boy threw himself toward the back of the kennel, still screaming, kicking, thrashing.
Tean turned.
The wolfman, the one who had lain at the bottom of the stairs, stood maybe ten feet away.
There was something wrong with his posture.
A broken shoulder, maybe. A cracked vertebra.
But those explanations came from that cold room inside Tean’s head.
The part of him that wasn’t clinical—the part of him that was still an animal, that still knew to be afraid of the dark—stared at this thing with the long, shaggy fur and the blank eyes, and all he could think was that it wasn’t human.
Humped. Misshapen. A werewolf caught mid-transformation.
And then, over the thrum of blood in his ears, Tean heard it.
The wolfman was making a small keening noise.
The noise grew into a howl—still soft, but it was impossible to mistake it for anything else.
There was something tentative about it. As though this thing—a man, it’s a human being, it’s not a monster, but then Tean remembered the bodies, the burns, the cuts, the head smashed in—as though this thing were trying something new.
The howl grew louder.
Trying it and liking it.
“Get out of here,” Tean said.
The knife lay at the edge of his vision. Light licked along the bloody blade.
The wolfman took a step forward.
“Go,” Tean barked. He made himself bigger. He clapped his hands. Most animals didn’t want a fight; even if they won, there was a chance they’d be injured. “Get lost!”
But not all animals. Not always.
Not if they were sick.
Rabid.
Still howling softly through the mask, the wolfman took another unsteady step forward.
The knife looked like it had been painted red and white.
“You can’t have him,” Tean said. His tongue was too big for his mouth. He caught himself about to drool and forced himself to swallow. “I won’t let you.”
The wolfman took another shuffling step.
The creature—the man—had no weapons. His hands were empty.
All Tean had to do was pick up the knife.
He’d spent enough time with Jem, been in enough bad situations with Jem, to know how to use it.
And anyway, it was part of his job. Veins and arteries.
The soft parts of bodies unprotected by bone.
Where predators made their kills. He knew how to put a mad dog down.
In that moment, the knife would be weightless. Just like the gun.
And then he’d carry it for the rest of his life.
Tean shook his head. He meant to shout, but his voice came out tired. “You can’t have him.”
The howling got louder. The wolfman’s next, shuffling step carried him closer. One more of those steps, and he’d be close enough to lunge.
Tean could feel his pulse in his throat. His head was tight. Something was pounding against the backs of his eyes.
The wolfman cocked his head, studying him. He howled again, but this time, it started loud and got louder.
In a blur, the wolfman shot forward.
Tean’s hand dipped to the pocket of his cargo pants. He grabbed the canister, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
A chemical cocktail jetted out of the can and hit the wolfman in the face. His charge faltered. He shook his head, trying to get clear of the spray. He made a strange, huffing noise, like he’d breathed in wrong. Or like he was about to sneeze.
And then he screamed.
A moment later, the blowback from the spray hit Tean, and he started to cough.
His eyes teared up. His chest burned. As bad as it was, though, it was nothing compared to a direct hit, even through the mask.
The wolfman stopped screaming and started to choke.
He flailed blindly for a moment, as though trying to grab Tean in a fit of rage.
Then he spun toward the stairs. He couldn’t run, but he dragged himself in a lurching shamble toward the steps.
His screams had changed to hacking coughs interspersed with high-pitched noises of distress.
Tean coughed and sagged against the kennel, legs shaking. A moment later, behind him, Daniel made a choking noise and started to hack.
“It’s okay,” Tean said. Tried to say. “It’s just bear spray.”
“Tean?” Jem’s shout came from the top of the steps. “Tean!”
“Down here! We’re okay!”
Jem hammered down the steps. He had his jacket wrapped around one arm, and the denim was soaked with blood, but otherwise, he looked fine.
“One of them just ran up the stairs,” Tean said. “I don’t know if there are any still in the house.”
Jem didn’t answer at first. He slumped against the stair rail. For a moment, he let his head rest, and his chest rose and fell with heavy breaths.
“Are you hurt?” Tean asked, wiping his eyes and fighting another wave of coughs.
Jem shook out a no. But then a violent shudder rippled through him.
“They’re gone,” Jem finally said. “The three of them. They got away.”
And it took a moment for Tean to recognize the frustration under the rage.
“It’s okay,” Tean said. “You did what you could, Jem. You saved our lives.”
Jem nodded, head still back against the rail.
Sirens wailed in the distance.