Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5) Read online

  “You’d be surprised…”

  “Look, are you here for a reason, or just giving me shit because of what happened?”

  Ghost Sam raised a hand over the snapping fire. “Relax, relax, I’m just here for company. I start to worry when you’re all alone. I don’t like where your thoughts go, Nick. You’re suited to solitude, but then again, when you’re alone your thoughts turn dark. Scary.”

  “Now I’m getting scare lessons from a ghost?” Lupo watched the sparks fly off the snapping logs like lava out of a miniature volcano. He picked up the bottle he had resting against his boot, dug up a shot glass from one pocket, and poured a generous slug of golden liquid. The glass had a floating loon etched in it and the legend Eagle River below the regal bird.

  He tilted the glass and let the strong, sweet taste of the B&B warm and slightly burn his tongue. It was one of his Up North traditions, the B&B. There was nothing like it to warm the gullet on a chilly night. Some people liked it on the rocks, but Lupo thought it was sacrilege. This was an elixir to be savored in small, grateful sips.

  “Nah, you don’t need my help to be scary. We both know that, don’t we? So, no drink for me, eh? Cheapskate.”

  Lupo snorted. “I don’t make the rules. You always get a charge out of what I eat and drink, right?”

  “I’d rather have one of your Midtown Manhattans. I remember those fondly. I noticed you’ve changed the recipe.”

  “Just a little. Instead of the Angostura bitters, now I lay in a long splash of Campari. It’s mellower and marries the Vermouth better.”

  “Nice.” The shadow Indian nodded. “Sounds tasty. So you like the new therapist?”

  Lupo barked a bitter laugh. “Subtle! Get me talking about booze and scaring and whatnot, then slip the knife in when I’m not looking. Good strategy.”

  “Thank you. I seem to have all the time in the world to come up with them.” His face seemed to float through the fire for a second, coming out of the shadows. Sparks shot up suddenly from below as the newest log tilted down into the fire, but the Indian couldn’t feel the heated embers. “So, what do you think of her?” he persisted.

  Lupo sighed.

  Marla Anders had taken over the vacated office of one Markowicz, the police department’s attached psychiatrist, who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances about the same time as the head of Internal Affairs, Griff Killian.

  Lupo shook his head. “I don’t know what I think of her, but at least she seems to be willing to listen and not judge. Markowicz was a nitwit, a bumbler. But I can’t say I’ve had much luck with therapists.”

  “No, Nick, you haven’t,” the ghost Indian chuckled. “But at least this one’s attractive enough, if you like ’em a little on the brassy side. And she’s still alive…” Two police psychiatrists Lupo had been forced to see later turned up dead. Well, the latest hadn’t turned up, at least not yet. The new construction on Highway 45 would have to be dug up first. “Besides her looks, you think this one’s better?”

  “Barrett hated me, and I still think Marcowicz was blabbing to Killian. Unethical as hell, but Killian had a way of getting people to play his games. I’ll never be able to prove it, though. At this point, I’d better not try.”

  “They weigh on you?”

  “Well, yeah, having to get rid of the bodies does, but I didn’t kill them, Sam. You know that.”

  In the shadows beyond the fire, the Indian’s ghost made a solemn nod. “Indeed, but you disposed of the bodies.”

  “What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”

  “You tell me.”

  Lupo snorted. “Apparently I’m seeing two shrinks!”

  On one level, he knew he was just debating his own conscience, but then again, whenever he managed to convince himself of that fact, Ghost Sam would sway him with a quiet word whispered in Lupo’s ear. Only this way had Lupo realized that Tom Arnow had allowed himself to be bitten by Heather Wilson so he could become one of them, a werewolf, in order to seek out revenge for the murder of his family.

  Arnow’s death—and the butchering of his family, for that matter—also weighed heavily on Lupo. He’d had nothing to do with the murder of his family, except that they’d wandered into the line of fire. But Lupo had been forced to kill Sheriff Arnow with his own hands, and he would forever feel the blood staining his skin.

  “No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man, eh, Nick?” Ghost Sam’s sense of humor was particularly peevish this night. “Isn’t that what one of your bands said?”

  “Yeah, so I have a conscience! So what? Make all the jokes you want.”

  Ghost Sam spoke, sadness in his tone. “It’s no time for joking. You’re not done yet, Nick. There’s more trouble headed your way.”

  Real or not, the old man’s ghost was always right.

  Heather

  Somewhere in Nebraska

  The flashing lights turned in behind her from total darkness. Seconds later she heard the siren bleating insistently on her bumper.

  She’d been cruising along to the sound of The Cure, her speed constant and barely above the limit. The two-lane blacktop lay like a ruler through the endless bare cornfields and she’d long ago, about a thousand miles it seemed, given up the hope of finding a motel—any dump at all—for the night. Each remote crossroads consisted solely of two identical roads crossing at ninety degree angles, a few bullet-riddled road signs, and only occasionally an anemic streetlight making an alien cone of shimmering haze that hung overhead.

  “Goddamn it,” she muttered, letting up off the gas after regaining control from the cruise robot she rather capriciously called Nick.

  She slowed gradually, then pulled over and glided toward the pitch-black gutter of a shoulder between the tall corn or wheat stalks, or whatever they were, and the road itself. The silver Lexus SUV crunched to a smooth halt and she powered down her window and waited. Behind her, the squad car kissed the rear bumper and she shot a glance into her mirror. She couldn’t see much, only a shadow in the driver’s seat.

  Her engine ticked in the cool night air.

  Finally the squad car door opened and a tall, gangly deputy unwound himself from the driver’s seat. His boots crunched on the road’s loose asphalt gravel. She watched him in the side mirror, until he filled it by standing slightly to the rear of her window.

  “Hello, Officer,” she said sweetly. She was a little dusty from the road, but she knew her hair was its usual lustrous honey-gold color, piled in waves around her classic face. She’d glossed her full lips in a favorite lilac shade, and she knew her eyes were large and limpid. She gave him a full-wattage smile before his face came at her out of the shadows.

  Heather Wilson was well-versed in using her appearance, as well as the waves of sexuality she emanated, for her own advantage. It was the keystone of not only her career, but also her life. She hadn’t been speeding, so there was a chance this trooper or deputy or whatever he was would just let her off once she batted her eyelashes at him. Maybe she’d blown a taillight.

  The first thing she noted about the cop was that he had some sort of high-tech goggles hanging from a strap around his neck.

  What’s that about?

  Then she noted that his craggy face was in the shadow cast by his tilted campaign hat.

  A state trooper, then.

  But…

  She expected him to say something polite, to start his approach with the obligatory Ma’am greeting. Ma’am, your taillight is out. Ma’am, you were going a little fast back there. Ma’am, your license plate is obscured.

  Instead he said, “My, my, my.”

  “Officer, what’s the problem?” She squinted in order to see him. Actually she pretended to squint, because he was expecting her to have difficulty seeing him against the hazy overhead light. Hanging back aways also forced her to twist her body and crane her neck painfully.

  She smiled tentatively. “Officer?”

  He shifted his weight and his boots crunched on the shoulder. H
e made some sort of sound with his mouth. A half-whistle and hum. His face remained in the shadows.

  She said again, “Officer, was I doing something wrong?”

  Finally he spoke. “Please step out of the vehicle.” His tone was flat.

  “Officer?”

  “Out of the vehicle. Now.”

  She sighed and released her seat belt. “Do you want my license and registration?”

  “I want you out of the car.” His hand hovered over an open holster, from what she could make out.

  “Officer, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong? What’s happening?” She twisted again, and heard him make the half-whistle.

  “I’ll explain after you step out of the vehicle. If you don’t comply, I will place you under arrest. Do you understand?”

  “Uh, sure, Officer, whatever you say.”

  She popped the door and stepped slowly out onto the blacktop. Her feet and legs seemed to disappear into inky blackness below. She edged away from the side of the car and it was like floating.

  The road was quiet, dead. There was nothing, no oncoming traffic or anything to indicate they might not be the last two humans on earth, or at least in this quiet corner of Nebraska. There was just the slight rustle of dead stalks in the cool breeze that fluffed the golden hair off her face.

  “My, my, my,” the cop said again. His hand was still on his gun butt. “Lady, I’m placing you under arrest for aggravated DWG.”

  She had plenty of experience with police codes. But she shrugged. “DWG? I’m sorry, I don’t know…”

  “Lady, you were definitely Driving While Gorgeous. Now step over to the rear of your truck so I can check your credentials.”

  Now she got the goggles. He’d gotten a better look at her as she passed him, thanks to the night-vision gear. She almost chuckled. The freaks were always more inventive. “Officer? What…?”

  He drew his weapon, a small-frame revolver. Nothing at all like what cops are currently issued. He aimed it at her. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  She shivered. The air was chilly.

  “Okay,” she said, making her voice shaky. She stepped between the rear of her Lexus and the hood of his squad car, noting the rust spots she hadn’t seen in the mirror.

  “Now, I called in your plate and there’s a flag on your jacket. You’ve been flagged as probably armed. I think we’d better have a strip search. Undo your clothes and drop them to the roadway.” He gestured with the gun muzzle. “Hop to it. The sooner you comply, the sooner you can be on your way. If there is nothing…you can get dressed and get back in your truck and be on your way.”

  She nodded furiously and set about unbuttoning her blouse. She stopped halfway and looked at him, a question in her eyes. He waved the gun and nodded. Get on with it.

  She whimpered a little and slipped off the silk, dropping it at her feet. Now she was standing in her lacy bra, her perfect breasts thrusting toward him, the nipples hardening despite herself. She knew they were visible through the sheer black material. She undid her belt and stepped out of the tight jeans, freeing her long, shapely legs. She kicked off her sneakers—expensive, though they didn’t look like it—and dropped the jeans onto them. She glared at the guy, and her nostrils flared when she saw that he seemed to be panting through his open mouth, his tongue moving obscenely inside. He gestured with the gun muzzle.

  This is getting tiresome.

  She slipped two fingers into the waistband of her skimpy panties, not quite a thong but close, and peeled them down her thighs until they floated down to the ground and she stepped out of them. Her magnificent buttocks were bare now, and her shaved sex stared him in the face.

  “Officer…?” she said, giving him one more chance.

  He licked his dry lips and she heard a low groan coming from his throat. She knew what it meant. He was working himself up. His eyes fixed on her covered breasts.

  She knew what he was thinking.

  She shrugged out of the bra and it joined the rest of her clothes on the dusty, oily tar surface.

  Completely naked now, she shivered convincingly. Her engorged nipples were dark peaks on her breasts and she knew when his breath caught in his throat that he was hers.

  She’d decided to give up targeting innocent people for her own playful urges, but he wasn’t innocent, was he?

  “On your knees,” he said, his voice hoarse. His breath was ragged. “Right here in front of me.”

  There was no doubt the revolver would go to her temple. He was that type. As much as the forced blow job would turn him on, as much as her lips wrapped around his cock would wind him up, it was the gun barrel pressing on her taut skin that would make him really hard.

  “Sure,” she said. “Anything you want. Just don’t… I beg you, just don’t taste too bad when I rip out your intestines.”

  “Uh, what?” The fake cop cocked his head, as if checking the recording to make sure he’d heard correctly. He took a half-step back, bringing up the gun. Still trying to process what she’d said, her meaning.

  But she’d started to kneel, her hands reaching for the fly on his dusty pants and her lush lips opening, ready to pleasure him. And later to beg, no doubt. She noticed he hadn’t even attempted to wear uniform trousers. Idiot.

  Her submissive aggressiveness bewildered him, but he was hard now and nature was tough to deny. Despite himself, his sudden doubts, he stepped toward her again, his swelling dick reaching for her mouth.

  And then Heather visualized herself making a smooth change, giving the DNA-realigning process a speed boost as she had learned from that other grand freak Siegfried, the evil CEO of Wolfpaw, and before the guy could react to the impossibility he saw, her face had become a long and graceful snout full of sharp fangs…

  When her closing jaws clamped on his groin right through his trousers and tore from side to side, the fake cop’s scream became a girlish shriek that echoed between the lines of shadowy stalks.

  Blood puffed up around her altered face like a cloud and she spit out clothing material and the part of his genitals she had ripped from his body. The taste of his blood intoxicated her and called up her growl as she shook her head and then tore into his lower belly with her viselike jaws. Sawing through ersatz uniform shirt, flesh, bone, and fat…

  His thoughts turned jagged, scattered snippets of all those extorted blow jobs he and his pals had enjoyed, but how this seemed like extreme payback.

  Her eyes fixed on his as, panicked, he tried to bring the gun to bear…but the sight of his own blood splattering the impossible wolf the woman had become—not to mention his guts squirting out of the widening tear in his belly—made it impossible for his hand to work right. Still, the gun wavered in search of a target.

  And then the wolf spit out more of his bloody entrails and clamped on to his wrist, tearing off both his hand and the gun it held.

  His desperate shrieking took over the night.

  One of his last sights was of the wolf’s eyes rolling and changing color as it continued to devour him alive, its snout now buried again in his butchered stomach. The wolf’s paws scrabbled in the gravelly tar for purchase as the animal’s jaws ripped again and again into the soft and squishy flesh.

  Heather ate her fill.

  Chapter Two

  Lupo

  Lupo had been looking up into the pine awning above, watching the smoke curl into the needles and disappear.

  Now, when Ghost Sam said, “You’re not done yet, Nick. There’s more trouble headed your way,” he dropped his gaze rapidly, staring across the flames at the hunched form of the Indian who had been his friend.

  The Indian who both was and wasn’t there. Who now seemed to fade into the dancing shadows cast by the flaring bonfire. Sparks burst outward and it was like a magician’s trick—the ghost disappeared behind the hot cloud.

  “What do you mean? Sam? What are you talking about?”

  There was no answer. The spot where Sam had been was empty now.

  Lupo
raised his voice. He heard a desperate note in his tone. “What are you saying? What’s coming my way? What—”

  A warm hand touched the back of his neck.

  He stiffened. Then slowly relaxed, wondering about his lack of awareness.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Jessie Hawkins laid her other hand on his back and leaned over his shoulder, her hair falling like a chestnut curtain onto his flushed skin. When he tilted his head up to look at her, she met him halfway and their lips touched. She tasted of the woods.

  “No one,” he said. “Just venting.”

  “It sounded like you said Sam. You miss him, don’t you?”

  He looked into her eyes. She’d heard more, he would swear to it. There was worry in her look, and he had a sense that he was frightening her. As much as he considered himself a monster, he never wanted to frighten her, not Jessie.

  Shit.

  He sighed. “Sometimes it helps me to speak to him, to his spirit, I guess,” he confessed.

  Sometimes a version of the truth was the best thing to say. Sometimes it was less of a lie. Hell, he knew the truth would definitely frighten her more. The suspicion that he might be losing his mind, for instance. The worry that his tenuous hold on reality was slipping.

  If she ever found out some of what he’d done. Of what he’s had no choice but to do…

  No, it was better to go with a half-truth.

  That made him only a half-liar, didn’t it?

  “I know what you mean. I talk to my dad sometimes, after all these years. It’s comforting.” She stepped around the rough-hewn bench and slid down next to him, her hands held out to the warmth of the fire. “I think it’s fine. Whatever helps. We both have a lot of healing to do.”

  Lupo put his arm around her and drew her closer.

  These last few days had been the best in a long time. For once they’d been able to step back from the cliff toward which they’d been heading.

  He tried to ignore the bandages still partially covering one of her hands. It had almost healed.

  “Want a slug?” He held out his shot glass.

  She took some of the amber liquid, her eyes fixed on him over the glass rim. Then she put the glass down and it just happened, they melted together in a warm embrace that quickly heated up even faster.