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  WOLF’S GAMBIT

  W. D. GAGLIANI

  Their Terrified Prey

  He barely felt the deep scratches that lined his face and arms, smearing blood down his shirtfront. His jacket was gone, lost somewhere behind him. Where they were. He didn’t care.

  He crashed through a thick screen of bushes, tripped on an uprooted pine sapling and found himself facedown on the dirt road, grasping handfuls of red mud.

  He heard bodies hurtling through the brush behind him.

  Up and running, his fancy shoes slipping in the mud, he hurtled down the wet dirt road, barely aware of the rain and the receding thunder.

  Howling came from inside the woods, where the dark shapes were pacing him from the side. Something crashed onto the road and he heard the scrabbling paws of some kind of beast.

  He screamed loudly.

  Something snagged his right ankle and he went flying through the air and face-first into the mud. Then the pain began…

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2009 by William D. Gagliani

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781477806432

  ISBN-10: 1477806431

  For my Mom and Janis, always loving and always supportive.

  And once again, in memory of my Dad…

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Their Terrified Prey

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prelude

  Part One Andante

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Part Two Intermezzo

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three Toccata (Con Fuoco)

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  EighTeen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Coda

  Acknowledgements

  Praise

  This title was previously published by Dorchester Publishing; this version has been reproduced from the Dorchester book archive files.

  Author’s Note

  The real Eagle River is located in the southern part of Vilas County, in northern Wisconsin. Once again I have altered it geographically, socially, and with regard to local city and county organization to suit my purposes. All characters in this alternate Eagle River and vicinity are either fictional or used fictitiously, and should in no way resemble their real-world counterparts. However, some things are unalterably true. If you drive up Highway 45 from Milwaukee, and find yourself in the North Woods just past dusk, you might notice shadows keeping pace with you from the undergrowth crowding the side of the road. The pines are set claustrophobically close together, but these shadows seem to move effortlessly among the trunks. If you look up, the moon’s silvery sheen might be filtering through the treetops. If you roll down your windows, you might hear the howling.

  Don’t roll down your windows.

  PRELUDE

  Five miles from Eagle River

  May 17

  He is running for his life.

  Jimmy Blackthorn’s Gucci shoes make sucking sounds in the mud, but he barely notices.

  His ears are hypertuned for the sounds of pursuit. From behind and beside him, he can sense something—more than one something—is pacing him, remaining invisible.

  A fast glance over his shoulder nets him a fleeting gray shadow.

  He hasn’t panicked yet, but he’s about to.

  When he hears the growls, the blood freezes in his veins.

  When the howling begins, his thoughts degenerate into a cloud of primitive terror.

  The dirt road is now mud that reaches up and snags his feet, slowing his headlong rush away…away from…

  His mouth is open in a soundless scream.

  Behind and beside him, the pursuit closes in.

  When he arrived, the storm was rolling in, the sound of distant thunder echoing through the pines. Lightning flashed a glow over the treetops, off to the west. The strobe effect increased in frequency, and the thunder grew louder by the minute, a rumble you could feel down in your shoes.

  Jimmy Blackthorn took only partial note of the approaching storm. He was fuming. He kicked a piece of sawed two-by-four out of his way and felt satisfaction. He rolled his eyes, stomped a step or two, then continued toward his car, parked near a large unfinished sign.

  His anger was boiling inside, building like a locomotive’s head of steam, threatening to set him off. He shook his head for the tenth or twentieth time. They had promised. There had been communication, and he’d been convinced they finally understood his position in this matter. The construction site would be humming the next time he stopped in, they’d said. There would be progress. Things would be moving, wheels rolling.

  Blackthorn had liked what he heard. He’d agreed that this effort would stave off problems with the investors. He nodded and smiled, but then he came out to check the site, telling himself he was wasting his time.

  When he arrived, the site was deserted. No humming. No wheels doing anything. Nothing moved at all.

  “Jesus Christ,” he’d shouted, after looking at the three big holes in the ground that would, with an inordinate amount of luck, become the Great Northern Casino & Entertainment complex. Casino, 400-room hotel, and adjoining theater for intimate performances by A-list celebs and bands gone C-list (but still willing to pretend if their fans were). He’d stared into the wide holes and felt the money sucked out of his pockets. Heard the sound of it clinking like casino change into the one-armed bandits.

  Ha, they don’t even bother with cash anymore, he reminded himself.

  He had stomped all over the site, looking for Sabin, the head security guard. Hadn’t found him at his trailer, in his car, or anywhere else. Nope, Jimmy Blackthorn was alone. The site was deserted. The workers were…just not there.

  He had tried making a call, but he couldn’t get a signal on his cell.

  Damn woods. Too many trees.

  He made a note to raise the topic of cell-phone repeater towers at the next meeting.

  Still grasping the useless cell phone, he had headed over to the future parking lot back to his car.

  He tried again to make a call, this time seeing the LCD bar that told him he was picking up a signal, then dialing, then seeing the bar disappear even as he started shouting into the phone.

  Jimmy stood behind his Beamer, a silver rag-top roadster, and smacked the hood in frustration. Once, twice, three times.

  Now he became aware of the rolling thunder that signaled the storm’s arrival. The tall stands of pines all around the clearing couldn’t muffle the thunderclaps any longer, and the lightning was beginning to filter through the thick tree line more insistently.

  He climbed into his car. He’
d have to go out of his way to report the site was abandoned.

  Again.

  This was the third time workers had walked off, and after he had been assured the head of security would make it his business to keep “accidents” and slowdowns to a minimum. Yes, there had been opposition to the casino being built, but it was a done deal now.

  Thunder crashed almost overhead. Not more than a couple miles away.

  Better get moving, he thought. Beat the storm.

  He turned the ignition and pressed the starter.

  Nothing. Not even a click.

  What the fuck!

  He repeated the procedure a half dozen times. Nothing.

  A fat droplet exploded on his head.

  Damn it. Rain. What else could go wrong?

  And he couldn’t put up the top without the engine on. Could he? He’d have to check the manual. But he didn’t have it with him. He’d never had the car not start. He tried his phone again and saw the teasing bars, but when he dialed they disappeared.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  Jimmy slammed the wheel repeatedly. More rain plopped into the car and on the upholstery. Would rain ruin the leather? Damn it, he was really pissed now. He would have Sabin fired first, and then he’d set about getting the workers—most of them local—replaced. They were under contract, and it was his job to make sure the construction was on time and under budget.

  Fat chance.

  He heaved himself out of the driver’s seat and stood trying to orient himself. The dirt road was behind him, but it snaked and curled through the woods. If he wanted to reach US 45 and the series of filling stations he remembered spotting every day, then he’d have to cut through the woods at an angle. The rain was beginning to intensify, splattering all around him.

  He took a last look at his car, almost crying to see the rain pelting the interior. Then he set off into the woods, heading approximately due southwest, where he estimated he could find a tow truck, a mechanic, a phone.

  Something.

  Soon he was surrounded by thick undergrowth and tightly packed pine trunks. Both made progress slow and draining. Jimmy Blackthorn was a city Indian, more accustomed to fancy bars and high-class restaurants. Any woodcraft he’d learned as a boy had long ago dissipated. And he’d never missed it.

  Darkness settled on him, the only exception provided by the lightning, which cracked the sky overhead. Though he couldn’t see the sky—the pines were too thick. Thunder followed each flash, loud booming gunshot crashes that took his breath away.

  The storm seemed to have settled overhead by now.

  But Jimmy Blackthorn was completely turned around. He realized that if he had any hopes of finding his way back to the highway it was going to be on the dirt road. But which way was the road?

  Now and again a drop of rain penetrated the trees’ deep cover and caught him in the face, but so far the storm was wimpier than he had expected. Lots of noise and flash, little substance.

  He tried to determine the way he’d come, but all the pine trunks looked the same. Behind them there was only black. He turned 360 degrees. It all looked the same.

  How could he get so lost in five minutes?

  Jimmy was pragmatic. First, he tried retracing his recent steps. Five minutes later, he might as well have been in the same spot. He tried a tilt to his left. Same result.

  Sweat now poured down his back, so he stripped off his leather jacket.

  He was going to get some people fired, big-time!

  He had to be a stone’s throw from the site, yet he seemed hopelessly lost.

  Something rustled in the undergrowth to his right.

  Jesus, now what?

  Jimmy Blackthorn had never been afraid of anything. But for the first time since leaving his car he wondered if he shouldn’t have stayed until after the storm.

  The rustling came closer, became louder.

  Jimmy turned his back on the sounds and started to run.

  The undergrowth reached out like clawing hands to grab his ankles and trip him.

  He ran, and the rustling ran with him.

  He stopped, and the rustling stopped.

  Then he heard the same sounds on his left.

  Christ, what—?

  He turned right and crashed through the brush. Whatever it was, it kept pace with him, behind him now.

  Wait, now there was rustling and…

  Panting. Was that his breathing or someone else’s?

  Blind panic blanketed his mind.

  The lightning and thunder seemed to be moving away, but whatever was in the woods with him was infinitely more frightening.

  Rustling and panting came together behind him, and he launched himself through the whipping branches in the opposite direction, desperate to put distance between himself and…and whatever that was.

  Suddenly he heard more rustling to his left and he corrected his course toward the right, still lost but determined to outrun whatever toyed with him.

  He barely felt the deep scratches that lined his face and arms, smearing blood down his shirtfront. His jacket was gone, lost somewhere behind him. Where they were. He didn’t care.

  Jesus, he prayed for the first time since he’d been a kid in the rez orphanage, Please Jesus just get me out of here and back to the car.

  He crashed through a thick screen of bushes, tripped on an uprooted pine sapling, and found himself facedown on the dirt road, grasping handfuls of red mud.

  He heard bodies hurtling through the brush behind him.

  His fancy shoes slipping in the mud, he ran down the road, barely aware of the rain and the receding thunder.

  Howling came from within the woods, where dark shapes were pacing him from the side. Something crashed onto the road, and he heard the scrabbling paws of some kind of beast—

  He screamed, no longer owned by his outsized pride.

  Something snagged his right ankle. He went flying through the air and fell face-first into the mud. Then the pain began.

  All he could feel was the agony, not knowing that his ankle was broken and his tendons torn through by a mouthful of long fangs in a snout that was now grasping thigh meat.

  Ripping thigh meat.

  Jimmy Blackthorn screamed as the muscular gray wolf that had hold of him shook him like a rag doll.

  Two more dark shapes burst out of the woods on both sides of him. They lunged, landing on his thrashing body. Jimmy’s voice turned into a gurgle as one of the wolves went for his throat, and the other sank its teeth into his stomach.

  Jimmy Blackthorn’s mewling was replaced by the sound of the wolves.

  Feeding.

  PART ONE

  ANDANTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lupo

  The light was strange, seeming to squeeze through a yellow filter. Tornado weather, the sky brushed liberally with sickly color, the air still—all portents of bad things to come.

  The house didn’t feel right. The door, ajar. Inside, the yellowish light leaned toward green. The curtains hung limply in the bedroom window. Every piece of furniture was tainted with the unpleasant hue, but the light was sufficient for him to make out the figure under the bedsheets, curled like an oversized infant.

  Heart beating more rapidly now, a shiver down the spine and a low growl building deep in the throat. Other changes beginning, minutely traversing paths unseen and unimaginable.

  His voice came as a hoarse whisper.

  “Jessie?” He swallowed through his tightening throat. Saliva tasted of rotted trash. He stared at the covered figure. It trembled gently.

  The light seemed to separate into green and yellow bands. He squinted, approaching.

  “Jessie, what’s wrong?”

  His voice sounded all wrong. The whole thing was wrong. He saw feet protruding from behind the bed. Jessie’s feet.

  The figure under the bedclothes reared up like a sheet-covered ghost from some video game.

  But when the sheet slid off, it was Martin Stewart, brandishing a blood-
slick scalpel.

  Nick Lupo leaped backward, but he was too off balance to completely evade the attack.

  The scalpel swished through the skin just below his chest. Lupo saw blood fly in a straight line from the long, clean incision. He barely felt the pain as the adrenaline kicked in, and he was able to avoid the return slice. The scalpel split air where Lupo’s right side would have been.

  Martin snarled rabidly.

  His face was made up almost to clown level. Eyes circled in black and gold glitter. Lips swelled to triple their size by deep violet gloss outlined in thick black lines. Cheeks painted with huge red spots. His teeth bared, he was simultaneously clown and angry gorilla, standing on the ruined bed and lunging again.

  Lupo’s thoughts of Jessie slowed him, but he still sidestepped awkwardly out of the way and suddenly became aware of the intense burning that had enveloped his chest, raging now through his bloodstream and to his pain sensors.

  Silver.

  Martin’s scalpel must have had silver smelted to the blade.

  Lupo’s sidestep turned into a fall.

  Jessie!

  Her dead body, mutilated by the freak, was sprawled beside the bed.

  And Lupo landed on top of her, his open chest wound afire and his mind clouding in grief and unbearable pain.

  Above him, Martin came in for the final stroke, scalpel raised high. The blade paused for a second, then flashed downward.

  Lupo struggled to wake himself.

  Jesus.

  His body bathed in sweat, he slowly let his muscles relax, his fists unclench to reveal bloody gashes from his fingernails. He forced his breathing to become regular.

  Another goddamned Martin nightmare.

  This has got to stop.

  Just for the hell of it, he checked his chest. No burning wound, no sizzling blood.

  No murdered Jessie. This was his apartment in the city. She was still safe in her bed in Eagle River, up in Vilas County, a six-hour drive away. He had no reason to think she was in any danger. It was just his mind playing its tricks on him.