There was no living in the big town after that. His mother had been Cajun through and through. Her roots were in the bayou country, and she used to take him there sometimes, on the rare occasions when she had some free time on her hands. Not to visit her people, mind you-they would certainly have viewed her monster offspring as a curse from God-but to show him the ways of nature, teaching him by bits and pieces how the greater system worked. It wasn't long before he had the basics figured out.
Kill or be killed.
Once he was on his own, he went back to the bayou country. It was touch and go, the man-child trying to compete with predators who had their act down cold. He lived on carrion at first, and precious little of it, but he learned. And it was almost good enough.
Almost.
A careless accident had nearly ended it, when he was coming up on twelve years old. He should have seen the moccasin, its thick body draped across a drooping mangrove branch, but he was concentrating on the fish that darted just beneath the surface of the brackish water. When the snake struck him, going for the face, there was no warning but a blur of motion and the stinging impact as its fangs sank home.
Between his panic and the poison coursing through his system, he had nearly died. He would have died were it not for the old Cajun hermit who had found him and decided it was worth a try to save the boy-thing's life. He had recovered, slowly, and the old man let him hang around, taught him the fine points of survival in the swamp ...and other things.
It was the hermit who had taught him he was special, blessed with certain powers that made other people cringe from him in fear. It was the old man who had shown him what it meant to be a loupgarou.
By teaching him to accept and even embrace his true nature, he had been prepared for the next great change that came over him.
Years later, when the hermit was too old to scrape a living out of the harsh and merciless bayou, his young protege was more than skilled enough to provide for them both. But the hermit was worried for the young beast he had adopted. The beast was mature, full-grown and vibrant with energy and vitality that should not be confined to their isolated corner of the swamp.
Then fortune, for the first time, smiled on the hermit. The strange woman appeared out of nowhere and offered the hermit cash money. In exchange, he gave her a piece of paper allowing her to set up her house trailer on their lonely bayou for three months.
She wasn't on vacation, and her mobile home was different from any RV the hermit or his ward had ever seen before. It was a living machine, always humming with energy. There were generators and air-conditioners and other roof-mounted machinery. The smells that came from inside were not to be believed.
The woman was fascinated with the hermit's young beast. She spoke to him without pity and exhibited no fear of him or his bizarre appearance.
She was a scientist, she said, and she recognized the young man's condition as nothing more than a standard case of hypertrichosis. Well, maybe a little more extreme than the cases she had heard of. "All victims of the condition are covered with dense hair all over their bodies," she explained matter-of-factly.
Aside from his mother and the hermit, this scientist woman was the only person he had ever known who treated him as something other than a freak.
When he told her he liked being what he was, the scientist smiled and asked, "Why?"
He told her about his love of the hunt.
The scientist began to show a glint in her eyes. Suddenly, the young man knew. It seemed impossible, but he knew. The woman scientist also enjoyed the hunt, strange as it seemed.
"What if you could be more of what you are?" she asked him then.
He was confused.
"What if you could be faster, stronger? The ultimate hunter? The leader of your own pack?"
He wasn't even sure what she was talking about. But of course he answered, "Yes."
WAY NORTH, from the direction of La Vista, the leader of the pack saw headlights coming, shining like a distant pair of luminescent eyes. He finished with the rabbit, tossed the clean-picked bones aside and walked back to the van. His brothers and the bitch all crowded in to lick his bloody fingers, and he left them to it. It would whet their appetite for what was coming.
The final target lived near Elmwood Park in Omaha, a few blocks from the College of St. Mary.
Cruising in his Dodge Ram cargo van, the leader of the pack watched street signs, checking them from time to time against the map he had draped across the shotgun seat. His eyes were keen enough to chart a course without the dome light, following the trail that he had marked out with a yellow felt pen on the map when he was laying out the hit. The others huddled close behind him, bright eyes peering through the van's bug-speckled windshield as he drove.
This was the last one. When this night's work was completed, he could go back home, rejoin the rest of his pack and recuperate for a while from the stress of being on the road. The balance of his money would be paid as usual, delivered by a pair of jumpy shooters who would drop the satchel at a designated point and speed away to minimize their risk of meeting the recipient. So far, the system had worked well enough. If he was lucky, there might even be some roadkill waiting for him on the highway near the drop.
He found the street he wanted, signaled for the turn and held the van a mile or two below the posted speed limit. No cops in sight, but it could be a problem if he met one. There was bound to be a hassle, and he couldn't guarantee that his reaction would be swift enough to drop the officer before he reached his weapon, much less handle two of them if they were traveling in pairs. That would mean shooting, and while he wasn't concerned about the bullets on his own behalf, the noise alone would cancel any hope of taking his appointed quarry by surprise.
This one was Cajun, like the last three, and he might know things. A trick or two for dealing with a loup-garou, perhaps. The leader of the pack had no desire to take that chance, if he could help it. It was better all around if he could catch his prey asleep, or at the very least distracted, tied up with the mundane chores of life when death dropped in to pay a call.
The house was dark, as he had hoped it would be. Likewise with the neighbors, at this hour of the night. Nebraskans came from farm stock, as he understood it, early to bed and early to rise. His target was a working man, as well, some kind of minigolf amusement park where children gathered, chasing little balls on artificial grass. The leader of the pack had hoped he wouldn't have to take his prey at work, where there were witnesses. It would be so much cleaner this way, better for all concerned.
He drove past the house and found a vacant house four doors down. There was a realtor's sign out front, and the carport was empty. He killed his headlights as he nosed the Dodge in off the street. His brothers and sister, handpicked by him from the pack for this arduous journey, were obedient. They would wait for him, as always, while he checked the house. It made them restless, but they understood the rules and didn't challenge him.
He left the van and closed the driver's door behind him softly, pressing gently till the latch engaged. It was a challenge, keeping to the shadows with a light directly opposite, but he was good at tracking, stalking prey. A little dog was yapping at him from a yard across the street, but it was no real threat. He worried more about the mongrel's owner waking, glancing out and spotting him, but he was almost at his destination now. A few more yards...
He slipped into the target's backyard through a side gate. The grass was several inches long, in need of mowing. It was obvious the man he came to kill was not a conscientious gardener. He left weeds in the flower beds and didn't trim the shrubs that grew close in against his house. Not that it mattered now. A few more minutes, and his worries would be over for all time.
He kept an eye out for security devices, spotting none. He was surprised from time to time that those he hunted made no greater effort to protect themselves. Not that a burglar alarm would have prevented him from doing what he came to do, but still, his quarry could have made the hunt more challenging.
He found the back door, reached out with his thick, dark fingers. He tried the knob, gently, and was startled when it turned. Unlocked? He crouched and sniffed around the door, suspecting something in the nature of a trap, and drew back without noting any kind of threat.
Should he go in without the others? They would never let him hear the end of it if he deprived them of a feast, but he could always scout the territory first, make sure the way was clear before he fetched them from the van. The kill itself was less important to the pack than feeding, after all.
He took the chance.
There was no word for protocol in his vocabulary, but he understood that he was stepping out of line. It was a small thing, but he told himself the others wouldn't mind. They would forgive him when they saw the kill and tasted blood. And if they didn't, well, it would be too damn bad.
But there was something wrong.
He knew it when he crossed the threshold, entering a little claustrophobic place that some would call the mud room, but was more a skimpy corridor than any kind of room at all. The house was quiet, as he had expected, but it was not sleeping quiet. Rather, it felt dead, abandoned, vacant.
No, he thought. The kitchen still bore cooking smells-another man who ruined his meat with fire-and there was glassware in the cupboards, silverware and other items in the drawers that flanked the rather dingy sink. He moved beyond the kitchen, traveling silently in darkness, and turned left down a corridor that took him to the living room. The place was fully furnished down to magazines splayed on the coffee table, and smelled strongly of cigar smoke.
He didn't possess his quarry's scent. The men who hired him didn't work that way, but they had left him photographs instead. It mattered not that they were out of date. The leader of the pack would know his prey on sight, and that was all he needed. Still...
He knew the feel of houses that have been abandoned. Something left them when the people departed, beyond the noise and everyday aromas that life generated: sweat, urine, feces, sex, the rest. When houses stood unoccupied, the smells began to fade, a little at a time, but there was more to it than that. An empty house felt empty, and it made no difference how much furniture was left behind to clutter up the lifeless rooms.
Could he have missed his final target? It defied all logic, but his senses told him that the man was gone. It seemed impossible, but life had taught him early on that anything could happen, and the worst shit came upon you when you least expected it.
Damn! The last one on his list before he went back home, and now the hunt would have to be prolonged. Worse, he had exhausted all the helpful information his employers could provide. Once he left Omaha behind, he wouldn't have the faintest glimmer of a clue where he should look.
He was a werewolf, damn it, not a fortune-teller. Maybe visiting? he asked himself, and clutched the slender reed of hope in shaggy, taloned hands. There was no rule that said his quarry could not have a friend, unknown to those who paid to have him killed. The others had their women, one with children who were tender and delicious in the end. Who said the final target couldn't have a-
No.
He knew that it was wrong. The house didn't feel gone-to-visit empty, waiting for the occupant's return. The ceiling, floor and walls boxed in dead air. Not long dead, granted-maybe no more than a day or two, but it may just as well have been a year. In his world, gone meant gone, and he couldn't pursue the stranger on his own without a scent.
Keep looking.
He pretended there was still a chance that he might be mistaken, moving back along the silent corridor in the direction he had come from. Past the doorway to the kitchen, past a bathroom on his left. Its door stood open, showing him a sink and toilet. There was no need for a light to prove the indoor privy was unoccupied.
There were two bedrooms at the south end of the house. He tried the smaller of them first, eliminating possibilities, and found the room unfurnished, used for storage, several stacks of boxes standing shoulder-high. One of them had been neatly labeled with a black marker, the name R. Baker printed on the side directly facing him.