Wolf for Hire

Chapter Forty Two

Eugene burst through the door of the utility building and immediately stepped to the side, holding it open. I careened through after him on all fours, carried forward by the extra weight of the jacket I was wearing.

I tried to stop, but my paws skittered across the polished concrete—like socks on a smooth tile floor. Momentum wasn't my friend, and while the jacket didn't weigh much on its own, it still had the magical mass of Eugene's junk collection.

Once I built up speed, stopping wasn't an option.

I crashed straight into a welding table with a chest-rattling clang. The thing was bolted to the floor, so it was more like hitting a solid wall. Most of the impact was dampened by the jacket itself, but it still felt like getting sandwiched between a rock and a wet weighted blanket.

I didn't so much get the wind knocked out of me as get deflated—like a half-hearted whoopie cushion. Ribs singing, I shoved myself upright on shaky limbs, leaning on the table for support.

It hurt to breathe, but I'd eventually get over it.

I'd already recovered from when Monty had damn near crushed me to death, with any remaining soreness evaporating once the moon had risen.

Who knew that lycanthropy, applied once a day, could keep the doctor away.

And, as a bonus, it had healed my ribs just in time for me to break them all over again.

I didn't know what the extent of a werewolf's regenerative abilities were, nor did I care to find out. This was a gifted horse I wasn't about to look in the mouth.

Especially when it had so many sharp teeth.

Coy and Boden's heads emerged from the jacket, now that it seemed safe enough. Coy scanned the workshop, while Boden administered tongue-derived first aid to the side of my face—a kiss to make the pain go away.

This damn jacket. I thought. No wonder Eugene was glad to let me wear it.

I'd gotten used to walking in it, more or less. Whatever enchantment—or spatial anomaly—gave its pocket dimensions their absurd depth, it hadn't been able to defy every law of physics. It didn't weigh much, but it still had mass, even if gravity politely ignored it. Which meant it still had its inertia.

Bill Nye hadn't prepared me for this.

While walking, I'd barely noticed the effect.

But I hadn't tried sprinting in it.

Or doing anything involving sudden acceleration for that matter.

The jacket seemed to resist any burst of speed or change in direction with the consistency of molasses. In the twenty-something feet I had to clear to get inside the building, it had been an arduous affair—like running through a dream.

One of those nightmares where no matter how hard you tried, you never run fast enough.

And now, with an actual Nightmare hot on my heels, I'd poured every ounce of my strength to defy those dream physics.

In our mutual panic—mine and the wolf's, because a giant mutant draft horse with a mouth full of pointy teeth was no bueno on all fronts—we'd dropped to all fours.

Just claw and paws—all the better to haul ass.

No thought given to how I was going to stop.

Eugene probably saw that coming. Which was why he'd wisely sidestepped me.

Three dogs in a trench coat, running from thralls,
They're coming on through like a bowling ball.

Behind me, Eugene had shut the door and was now muttering under his breath, pointing the wand strapped to his injured hand at the seam, his staff planted to the ground with his other hand. A crackling point of orange light traced a slow, deliberate path along the side of the door opposite the hinges—like the bead of a weld, binding the door to its frame.

Considering the walls were nothing more than a thin swath of sheet metal with a layer of insulation, I wasn't sure how much good welding the door shut was going to do.

No sooner had he finished than a shadow filled the small wire-mesh window in the center of the door.

BOOM.

The wall and door buckled inward at once, a thunderous impact as the horse-creature slammed into them like a wrecking ball, and Eugene fell back on his ass right next to me.

There was a screech of rending metal as the sheet paneling tore free from its support columns, and the door—along with the frame—ripped loose from the anchor bolts at the baseplate, caving in and upwards.

The entire side of the building shook, and the floor jumped beneath my feet.

But, to Eugene's credit: the door had held.

The problem was the walls—and everything else.

While this warehouse wasn't one of those cheap-ass aluminum prefabs, its structure built instead from galvanized steel (you couldn't use regular steel this close to the ocean), that didn't change the fact that the building was old.

Not as old as the mill itself, which was going on a century at this point, but built as part of its many expansions over the following decades since its founding.

I'd wager it was about twenty to thirty years in age—at the least.

And with the mill now slated for decommissioning, upkeep and maintenance was no longer a priority.

The salt air had been slowly eating away at the rivets and bolts that held everything together. The wall fans meant to ventilate the workspace trilled with years of corrosion and neglect, spinning on dry bearings that likely hadn't seen oil since before the pandemic.

Another slam.

And then another.

Dust fell from the rafters, tools and equipment fell from the wall, and somewhere in the warehouse's dark interior, there came a crash as one of the light fixtures detached from the ceiling, shattering across the floor.

The building was falling apart.

I could see the creature through the door window. It had reared up, hooves flailing. Then it brought them down hard, putting its entire weight behind them, pounding at the side of the building with a rhythm that turned my stomach.

SLAM. SLAM.

SLAM. SLAM.

Like two men with sledgehammers.

Or, perhaps, like some jacked-up boxer, throwing punches like the Italian Stallion himself.

Why the Rocky Balboa reference, you may ask?

Well, because, if all this wasn't harrowing enough, the next thing to burn itself into my memory with unfortunate clarity was that our nightmare...

Wasn't actually a mare.

We had ourselves a Sylvester Stallion.

And Sylvester had himself flailing pool noodles.

There was a reason directors only ever used female horses in their movies, and magic had made that reason even bigger—along with everything else about the horse.

Not to mention the new dental work.

Each of his strikes left the wall dented, as if it were made of aluminum foil. Just a little bit longer, and our horse-creature would have himself a horse-creature-sized door.

And, not long after that, Eugene and I would be bloodstained smears on the pavement.

That is, if there was anything left of us at all. Because I had a feeling that our Sylvester, with teeth like that, was meant to do more than nibble.

Pretty sure he was meant to eat us.

You know, somewhere between digging through dumpsters, and being sieged by a hungry magical mutant, the thought of being thrown in jail and having to stand trial, suddenly didn't seem so bad anymore.

That, if I ever found myself within the disappointed gaze of Judge Childs once again...

I would bask in it.

Anything would do if it meant getting out of this alive.

I'd gotten my taste of magic this night, and let me tell you—

It was bad.

Eugene stood to his feet, tossing me his staff, which Boden caught. "Keep it distracted! I need a minute!"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that?" I barked—yipped, really—my voice was still pitched up; it seemed it was now stuck like that. "I'm just a werewolf. I'm not that strong. That thing is way out of my weight class."

By picking a fight with the creature that was currently beatboxing our building, one that outweighed me by at least two tons, I wasn't just going to get my ass handed back to me worse than Apollo Creed.

I was going to have it detached entirely.

Like Evander Holyfield, but I'd be losing more than part of my ear.

But hey, at least turning into a rage thrall was no longer on the menu.

I was.

"No!" said Eugene, clearly exasperated by my derailing thoughts. "I meant shoot the damn thing! Just need to keep it back! Buy me time!"

"Time for what?"

Eugene snapped his fingers, and the ring of keys reappeared in his hands.

"To give it the Slip!"

I blinked, and something clicked.

"You're opening the portal?"

"That's the plan," said Eugene, as he took off toward the back, fumbling with the ring of keys as he made a b-line for the broom closet.

I would have growled in frustration, but what came out was more like a high-pitched whine.

This big bad wolf was all out of bravado.

If anything, she just wanted to go home.

Back in the jacket, boys. I signaled to my two shoulder companions, taking the staff from Boden.

They disappeared into the folds without protest.

I dropped to my belly, placing the staff down in front of me, using it as a prop to hold Eugene's gun steady.

Normally, I was a good aim—but my hands were shaking.

Through the gap where the warped sheet metal had peeled away from the baseplate, I caught sight of the creature's back leg. It was reared again—hooves ready to slam down—and I had a perfect view of one of its hind ankles.

I aimed the gun, lining up the slights.

Whatever this thing was made of, it still had heels. And with all that weight on such spindly bits of bone and cartilage, they were likely even more vulnerable than my own.

I squeezed the trigger.

Bang.

I hit the creature in the ankle.

And subsequently blew out my eardrums.

We both screamed.

While this wasn't the first time a gun had gone off near me while in wolf mode, the peashooter Carl had aimed at my ass had been a lower caliber than Eugene's Colt—and it hadn't gone off right next to my head.

Turns out, werewolves—with their sensitive hearing—didn't mix very well with guns.

As someone who grew up in a gun-toting household, with a family that liked to hunt and fish, I was familiar with the bane of existence known as tinnitus.

Not personally, mind you—but by extension.

My dad had it, his dad had it, my uncle too. All consequences of not using ear protection while firing guns since childhood.

My brother had been smarter—actually using said protection—and had avoided any gun-related hearing loss. But his work fixing aircraft engines for the military gave him other ample opportunities to fuck up his ears anyway.

So basically, all the men on my dad's side had tinnitus.

And now I'd gone and joined the family legacy of screwed-up hearing.

The moment after I'd pulled the trigger and the muzzle flashed, it felt like someone jammed a screwdriver into each of my ears. Accompanied by a popping sensation, like that someone had cracked open a soda can in my head.

I dropped the gun and slapped both hands over the sides of my head with a strangled howl. The world spun hard, a wave of vertigo hitting me like I'd just stepped off a tilt-a-whirl blindfolded.

Or, in this case, blinded by the muzzle flash—made worse by my eyes being adjusted to night.

But hey, now Eugene didn't need me to imagine what it was like to not have a vestibular system anymore. Not after I'd just wrecked the whole damn thing.

What came next was the silence.

And not the comforting kind.

The literally deafening kind.

That all-consuming ringing.

The tinnitus.

Like someone had struck my brain with a tuning fork and left it vibrating in the echoing void of my head.

But the shot had done its job—sort of.

There was no more pounding on the walls.

The ground had shook when the horse-creature had fallen to the ground, having had one of its feet put out of commission.

On its remaining three, the creature had then risen and retreated.

Now the only thing pounding was my skull.

But that was its own kind of bad.

Because I couldn't tell where the damn thing had wandered off to.

My ears were in shambles, and my only line of sight was the warped gap under the wall, which was currently being obscured by the flashing in my eyes.

Smell alone wasn't going to be enough to pinpoint the creature. I could smell it. Knew it was still close. But that was it.

I rolled to my feet, grabbing the gun and the staff.

Coy. Boden. Out now. I need you.

Their heads popped out of the jacket—they were getting good at this whack-a-mole routine—and I reached for them mentally.

I brushed against their minds and tapped into their senses—like I'd done with Maggie and Coy earlier today to track Boden's scent. Like the wolf had done back at the barn with all the other dogs, perceiving beyond her confines using the ears and eyes of others.

Two data streams suddenly piped in through my skull. A sensory flood that quickly overwhelmed me—adding to my vertigo.

But I wasn't sorting through it alone.

The wolf was there with me.

I could delegate.

She stepped up to take over surveillance and connected with Coy and Boden in my stead.

Be our ears, she told them.

Together, guided by the wolf, my two shoulder companions began to work in tandem—heads and ears swiveling, noses sniffing—like two little satellite dishes.

With our dog-eared array online, the sound of the mill started to return to me: distant humming from equipment outside, the tinny rattle of keys behind me.

The wolf shifted their attention outwards, letting Boden and Coy tune in on the exterior of the building. The horse-creature had backed off, and we needed to know where.

I could smell blood—fresh, sharp, and hot. The shot hadn't mortally wounded it by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd hopefully hobbled the damn thing.

And then there was that lingering smell—the residuals of the foul magic. But wasn't just the reek of dried-blood that had clung to the other thralls—it was something stronger. More developed. Still in the same arcane-olfactory family, but now it was like someone had bottled it, aged it in a dark cellar, and let it ferment into something truly vile.

A magic that the wolf found instinctively repulsive and unnatural.

Where are you? I thought.

Hell, I thought bitterly, what are you?

Somewhere beyond the wall, the creature let out a high, wet-sounding whinny. The kind of noise that made your skin try to crawl in two directions.

It was wounded—but that hadn't been a sound of pain.

No.

It was pissed.

Probably cause because it had been shot in the foot

Something that would've probably pissed me off too.

"What the hell is that thing?" I shouted at Eugene. " And what the hell is this biomancy? I thought you said we were dealing with a theriomancer?"

Not that it really made any of it made a difference to me. It was all just arbitrary jargon for more of the same magical bullshit that I, once again, was being subjected to.

I peered through the window, scanning the shadows outside, straining to catch any sign of movement through Coy and Boden's senses.

I was scared.

And furious.

I felt like I'd been set up. Eugene had tried to explain everything I'd asked him, sure, but evidently he left out a few goddamn footnotes.

Him and Nevermore.

He didn't even look at me, just shoved another key at the lock. "I'll have to explain later. We don't have time right now."

Yeah, no shit!

"Let me handle this, detective," said Nevermore, who was perched on a nearby table. "You focus on preparing our escape."

Nevermore turned to me, speaking quickly and frankly. "Allison, recall we suspected Kirkland had collaborators. The same likely applies to our Puppeteer. While controlling animal thralls suggests the use of theriomancy, Desmond's assay only picked up traces of biomancy. Think necromancy—but for living things. We can assume that it's what made the dogs larger and more aggressive."

I stepped back from the door, crouching low. I turned to look at Nevermore. "Larger? I thought they were just choosing bigger breeds."

"A fair assumption. But if you're going to biomance something, you might as well start with stronger stock. What we've seen thus far were either at early stages—or given subtle alterations to pass as normal."

Recalling my encounters with the thralls—both dead and alive—I remember the feeling of having been watched from something beyond the eyes of the thralls.

The magic of the puppeteer's mind-control.

Eugene said strong emotions could weakened one's mental defenses, make them easier to control. So magic that warped the mind and body could synergizes with the puppeteer's—give them stronger and more compliant thralls.

But now, based on what Nevermore was saying, Eugene's assay hadn't picked up the puppeteer's magic. Instead, it had returned a dark-green flame—the magic of a biomancer?

Not that that clarified anything—it was still all just magic to me.

Perhaps, without a living subject—one with a functioning mind—the puppeteer's magic wouldn't have been detectable anyway.

And, on top of the fact that the assays were inherently subjective, that meant much of our investigation—Eugene's really—was based heavily on speculations.

Then, there was the fact Eugene had said he was after Kirkland, a petty smuggler.

But nothing about this seemed petty at all.

Was it possible we'd gone after the wrong person?

That I had led us in the wrong direction?

No.

That wasn't right.

The thralls, the ones that had attacked Eugene last night, had led me to the Slip in this building.

A slip that Eugene confirmed bore signatures of Kirkland's magic.

The two were somehow tied—Kirkland and the ones controlling the thrall.

But we were missing something. I could sense that at the least.

That something else was going on.

Something we'd accidentally stumbled into—and I say we because I was sure that Eugene wouldn't have knowingly let us walk right into a clusterfuck.

He could be bit of an entitled prick, sure. But he wasn't suicidal.

That, and our pact would have prevented either of us from acting with intentional malice.

But, then again, it wouldn't have saved either of us from from our own incompetence.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

All of this was making my head hurt. Even more than it already was.

But something else had stood out to me.

My fingers twitched near the trigger . "Wait—so you knew something like this could happen?"

"No," Nevermore said, hopping towards me, feathers flaring, seemingly flustered. "At least, not to such a degree. This is an unforeseen escalation. One that goes well beyond our arrangement with Detective Desmond, and even his contract with the DOA. Our priority now is to get you both out safely so we can report our findings."

Our findings? The damn thing found us!

"Case in point," Nevermore chimed, more than a little pep entering voice. "We are likely dealing with a right and proper chimera. Must say, I've always wanted to see one of these up close."

"Oh! Great! Glad we can categorize it! Now how do we deal with it!"

"We don't," said Eugene, shoving in another key—a twist, but no click. He swore before continuing. "I don't mess with chimeras as a professional policy. They're a guaranteed early retirement. Can never tell what they are capable of until it is too late."

He rammed in another key.

Still no luck.

"Best to put as much distance—or a layer of reality—between you and them." He finished.

I couldn't agree more. Even with the shading from the hardhat and vest Eugene and I were respectively wearing, the horse-creature—this chimera—had quickly sniffed us out. Hell, if it was anything like me, then it had a multitude of senses, both normal and supernatural, that it could use to track us.

Either that or Eugene's magic wasn't as good as he made it out to be. There was really no good way to tell whether the shades were working or not.

It was probably all the more reason he needed someone like me to believe in his magic. Probably knew he needed all the help he could get.

Eugene swore as yet another key refused to turn. "Mich already wanted this case elevated," he growled. "Now he'll have everything he needs to fast-track it."

Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing?

"Because it means my investigation, the specific reason I was contracted to track Kirkland all the way down the east coast, is going to get shelved." Growled Eugene.

What was Eugene on about now? Wouldn't the DOA want to help him apprehend Kirkland after this?

Then again, I was aware that I'd joined Eugene late in the game, that there was a lot that have already gone on that I was not yet privy too.

I was willing to bet the Eugene and Kirkland even had a history.

Best to get through this so that I'd have the luxury of never needing to find out why.

Outside, the horse-creature made one of its trilling cries. Only, this time, it came from a different direction than before.

The creature was up.

And it was moving.

"How much longer, Eugene?!" I said in a harsh whisper that bordered on a whimper.

He jingled his ring of keys.

There were dozens more to go.

"But you just had it!" My voice pitching again.

"Didn't think I'd need to find it again so soon!" He countered.

"Didn't think to label them?"

"Hindsight's twenty-twenty."

This is how I die, I thought, at the hands of a disorganized hoarder.

"Can't you defuse your own ward or—hell, magically figure out which key it is?!"

Eugene shook his head. "No, good wards aren't easy to defuse. And all the keys are magically identical."

A beat. Another key slid in.

It didn't turn.

"And the door's physically locked too," he added. "But that was meant as a redundancy."

Another pause.

"You know?" said Eugene. "For safety"

Yep.

We were so fucking dead.