Thomas's grunts and groans of pain only lasted for a short time, a minute at most. Silence soon descended and remained for a few seconds, before the muzzle of a large wolf popped between the two front seats. Sara screeched in surprise, and Tommy rumbled a sound that was suspiciously close to laughter.
"Evil bastard," she chastised, tapping him on the nose with her hand.
"Have you seen your boss in his wolf form before?" I asked, as Tommy's head vanished from sight.
"But never in a moving vehicle." She turned back to her boss and tutted, before going a little green. "There's blood all over back there."
"The change from man to wolf is a hard one, there's always a bit of body fluids left over. It's why he covered the back seat in plastic."
A short while later, the Sat Nav suggested we'd reached the end of our journey. I stopped the car and switched off the engine, before getting out into the cold. The bare ground outside was rock solid.
I opened the rear truck door, allowing Tommy to jump out. The big grey wolf sniffed the ground in a few places and wandered off.
"Why did Tommy go all wolf, instead of turning into his wolf-man form?" Sara asked as she joined me, hugging herself as tightly as possible with one busted-up hand. The winds whipped around the exposed farm, and although there were trees in the distance, the amount of open ground allowed the wind free rein, despite the dilapidated farmhouse and barn.
"The wolf-man form is better for fighting, but the beast inside still tries to get out. The beast is less of a concern in full wolf form, and it's also better for tracking."
"So why not change when we were trying to find Neil?"
"Too many humans around. They tend to notice giant wolves roaming the place."
Tommy stalked past, moving methodically, and occasionally raising his muzzle to sniff the air. He turned his head to one said and darted off toward a small pile of old, rusty metal.
I moved to the still-open rear door and adjusted the plastic, before pulling out a briefcase. I inputted the code; one-four-one-four, the year Tommy had been turned into a werewolf, and popped the locks. I opened the case, and a gasp from Sara reminded me that not everyone was as used to seeing guns as I was.
I picked up one and showed it to Sara. "This is a Glock 22," I said. "It's a Smith and Weston version of the Glock 17." I ejected the magazine and showed it to Sara. Tommy changed the ammo every evening, a habit he'd gotten into after he'd left a magazine full for too long and it misfired.
"This gun has fifteen bullets, all silver tipped.” I grabbed a spare bandage and strapped the ice-pack to her injured hand, before placing the gun in the working one and showing her how to hold it. She was lucky that her injured hand wasn't her dominant one. While Sara was nervous, and her hands sweaty, she complied without complaint.
"Does this have a safety?" she asked, aiming the gun off into the empty distance.
"It's part of the trigger. You pull the trigger, the safety disengages.”
Tommy made an appearance before I could explain more. "Anyone here?" I asked.
Tommy barked twice.
Sara raised an eyebrow in question.
"One bark means yes, two means no," I pointed out. "You find anything else?"
Tommy barked.
"Something bad?"
Tommy made a whining noise that meant he wasn't sure.
I turned to Sara. "Keep the gun pointed at the floor unless your life is in danger. You do what I say at all times, clear?"
Sara nodded. She was clearly scared and trying not to show it.
I stopped her as she walked off to follow Tommy who had made his way to the farmhouse. "Don't worry about being scared," I said. "That's good. Be scared, use that fear. You'll be okay, I promise you. There's no one here. Tommy is probably just getting a scent of some dead rats or something. But if there is anything here, they're not getting past Tommy and me. I promise you that."
Sara nodded, seemingly ready for whatever was about to come. Or as ready as anyone can be. I reached under the truck seat and grabbed a bullet proof vest Tommy kept for emergencies. "Put this on," I said, passing it to Sara.
She did as she was told, handing me the pistol as she strapped it on. "Don't you need one?" she asked, taking her gun back.
I shook my head and we started off to follow Tommy.
The roof of the farmhouse was all but destroyed, and vines had grown high enough to obscure most of the windows on the ground floor. Part of the brick work was crumbling, leaving a large hole in one side of the farmhouse, just big enough to stick your head inside. If anyone was living inside, it could only have been due to a lack of other choices. Tommy sat outside the main entrance to the building. He saw Sara and me approaching, and pawed at the door. "Is Timmy in there, boy?" I asked. "Did he fall down a well?"
Tommy growled.
"What does that mean?" Sara asked.
"Fuck off," I said, gaining a chuckle from Sara, and slightly breaking the tension that had built up.
Tommy regained my attention by pawing at the door once more. I sighed and tried the handle, surprised to find it didn’t open.
"Why would an abandoned home have a locked door?" I placed my hand against the door lock and white glyphs lit up across the back of my hand. A fierce blast of air hit the lock and ripped it from the doorframe, the metal bouncing around inside as the door swung open by itself. "Not at all creepy," I said to Tommy who nudged the door further open with his nose and padded inside.
"You ready?" I asked Sara.
She nodded, and we followed Tommy into the house.
However decrepit the outside appeared, the interior was even worse. The staircase was rotten and falling apart, wooden boards jutted dangerously from the wall. And anyone who actually managed to get upstairs would have found only empty air where the floor above used to be. I stared up through the massive hole in the ceiling, where sunlight streamed through the destroyed roof.
"Who could stay here?" Sara asked.
There were no doors, and the plaster had fallen from most of the walls, leaving bare brick or wood in its place. "Someone desperate," I said. "Or someone who doesn't want to be found."
Tommy's bark could be heard from the rear of the house, so Sara and I walked toward it, carefully watching where we placed our feet for fear of falling through the floor. Surprisingly, the floor held, in fact it was of good quality. Someone had done recent work on it.
We found Tommy sitting in front of a door in what used to be the kitchen, rat droppings littered the floor where once-white, hard tiles now lay broken and stained yellow.
Tommy's bark turned me away from the apocalyptic scene before me. He was staring up at the shiny new lock that had been fitted onto the basement door in front of him. It was a heavy duty job, and using magic to knock the lock out of position as I had with the front door would probably just rip the door apart, causing more noise than just kicking it in.
"So we have a falling-down house, with a locked front door and a basement door with a brand new lock. Anyone else got a really bad feeling about this?"
Tommy barked.
I motioned for everyone to stand back and then kicked the lock as hard as possible. The door didn't budge. It didn't even sway as the shock travelled up my leg. "Steel posts inside the door," I said rubbing my knee.
"So how do we get in?" Sara asked.
"With noise," I said and orange glyphs flared to life over my hands. A blade of fire extended down from one hand, stopping after a few feet. I sank the blade into the door, just under the lock, and dragged it up in one smooth motion. The sound of steel sizzling made more noise than I'd have expected, but after a few seconds I removed the blade and booted the door once again. This time it slammed open into the plasterboard behind it. The residual heat from the metal started a small fire, which I quickly put out with my hands, before removing the glyphs altogether.
"How'd you do that?" Sara asked, her mouth agape.
"Fire magic," I said with a smile, which was broken by a deep growl from Tommy as he descended the steps into the blackness beyond.
"You want to stay here?" I asked Sara, who shook her head.
I closed my eyes as the orange glyphs came back to life. When I reopened them, the world was a mixture of red and orange, allowing me to see in the dark. It wasn’t as good as Tommy’s night vision, but it was better than falling down a flight of stairs.
I led Sara down the stairs, making sure she didn't trip. Once we reached the floor, I found Tommy, crouched in the corner. His hackles were up and a low growl was emanating from his throat. A girl sat in front of him. Her hands were above her head, tied behind a pipe, or pole, of some sort. Long hair covered her face, but it was easy to tell that she was dead.
"Take Sara out of here," I told Tommy.
But before he could say or do anything, Sara had knocked a light switch, bathing the entire room in a low, white light. It took her two seconds to spot the body, and she screamed, probably more from shock than anything else. But then she spotted the large mass of blood on the walls and floor and realised what had happened here and for a moment I thought she was going to faint.
"Oh, my God, oh, my God," she said over and over.
"Tommy," I said. He dashed over to Sara and began to nudge her toward the stairs. Getting pushed by a normal dog can move a fully gown person, getting pushed by a thirteen stone pack of muscle like a wolf, will move anyone. Sara had little choice but to comply and she soon vanished back into the house. After changing back to his human form, Tommy would call whomever he needed to, and hopefully give me enough time to figure out what had happened.
I looked around the room. Someone had covered all the windows with cement, and it looked old. This place had been prepared in advance. I turned back to the dead girl, and noticed the marks and bruises on her arms. Moving closer, I got a good look at the deep cut that had severed her throat, but even from a distance I could tell it was deeper than it needed to be to kill someone. It had been done with a lot of anger.
I got a closer look at her face, a mass of bruises and cuts. Her entire front was drenched in blood, cumulating in a large pool that spread out from under her bare legs, which were covered in smaller cuts and bruises. Whatever had happened here had been premeditated and prolonged. If there's one thing I know when I see it, it's torture. And the poor girl in front of me had gone through hell.