Wolfsbane Read online

  Yeah, definitely a moaning.

  “Cooo!” he said. “I believe somebody’s done buried you ’fore you was ready. Don blame you: I be moanin’, too.” He looked around, spotting a huge mound of earth that he did not remember being there the last time he took this shortcut . . . which was the previous evening.

  Phillip decided to take a look. He walked (staggered) toward the mound of earth, stopping as he heard a snarling sound. It was muffled, as if it came from the grave itself.

  “Now, jes a minute,” Phillip spoke to the snarling. “Don get mad wit me. I din have nuttin to do wit your being in the ground. Wasn’t ma fault. But,” his face brightened far past its usual state of beet red, “I hep get you out!”

  He staggered on, stopping at the mound of fresh dirt. The dirt was scattered all about. “Messy damn gravediggers,” he said. A foul odor sprang from the open pit. Phillip drew back, his nose wrinkling. “Cooo, boy! You rank. You need to wash your ass!”

  A moaning cry drifted from the hole, almost a cry for help, so it seemed to Phillip. It sounded, to his alcohol-soaked brain, like the man was saying, “Cold. Cold.”

  “Shore, you be cold, boy. Hell! You done kick all the dirt off you.”

  Then, as a few sober gray cells struggled out of the brine in his brain, Phillip squatted back on his heels and pondered what he had just uttered.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Dirt off, eh? If dirt off, ’at means dirt musta been on ’fore it was off—is ’at rat?”

  Phillip clawed his way up the mound of damp earth and peered over the top, his glasses sitting firmly on the end of his nose. He came face to face with the most God-awful sight he had ever witnessed in his entire life. Drunk or sober.

  A hairy face was staring back at him, eyes red-rimmed and animal-like. The mouth was huge, with fangs bared, drool leaking from both corners of the aperture. One large hairy hand came out of the hole to land squarely on Phillip’s shoulder.

  Mr. Phillip Duchesne, now well on his way to total sobriety and having just deposited a load in his pants, summed up his predicament with one simple sentence: “Oh, shit!”

  Then Phillip screamed louder than on the night he had physically discovered the difference between boys and girls. He screamed so loud the creature jumped, lost its footing, and fell backward into the hole.

  That was all the time Phillip needed.

  He was off and running, war wound forgotten, no sign of any limp whatsoever. Had a VA officer seen this display of tombstone dodging and leaping, Phillip would have lost all his disability money.

  “Haallpp!” Phillip hollered into the night, his voice bouncing off the silent stones. “Whoooo!”

  Sheriff Vallot, with Pat riding shotgun, picked that time to cruise past the cemetery. “Did you hear something, Pat?”

  “Somebody hollering, I think.” Pat rolled down his window.

  “Whoooo! Haallpp!”

  “In the graveyard!” Edan spun the wheel and roared past the gates of Eternal Rest (perpetual care) cemetery, the car lights on high beam.

  Phillip looked behind him; the thing seemed to be gaining on him, loping effortlessly across the ground. “Leave me be, you ugly son-of-a-bitch!” Phillip yelled. “Whooo!”

  The roo-garou snarled its reply, holding out its hairy arms, as if beckoning Phillip to stop his running away and come to him.

  “’At’ll be the day!” Phillip yelled, then cut in his afterburners, the soles of his shoes kicking up pebbles as he ran toward the lights of a fast-approaching car roaring down the cemetery road. Phillip jumped on the hood, managed to stay on the slick metal, and grabbed a spotlight in each hand. “Whooo!” he hollered, his face pressed grotesquely against the glass.

  “Phillip!” Edan yelled. “Get off—I can’t see.”

  “Your ass!” Phillip yelled. “Whooo, I ain’t fixin’ to get offl”

  “Hard left!” Pat shouted above Phillip’s hollering. “Then stop.”

  Edan spun the wheel and jammed on the brakes. Phillip went over the top of the prowl car and slid onto the trunk, grabbing onto the twin antennas mounted on the rear fenders.

  The high beams caught the creature in harsh light, momentarily blinding, confusing, and seeming to paralyze the beast.

  “Mother of Godl” Edan crossed himself. “Look at the size of that thing.”

  “You look at it,” Pat said. “’Cause I’m going to see if I can kill it.” He jumped from the car, jacking a round into the riot gun. He stepped into the glare of lights, centered the beast with the shotgun, and began firing. He emptied the 12 gauge, rocking the night with heavy booming.

  Pat began at the beast’s belly; by the time he had finished, the shotgun had climbed up to the head, the slugs tearing away part of the creature’s face.

  After the roaring of the shotgun, the night was abnormally quiet. The beast was still, its blood splattering the marble around the scene of the carnage.

  Pat walked back to the car and helped Edan pry Phillip loose from the trunk and get him into the car. The man was numb from shock and seemed unable to speak.

  “You better take him home,” Pat said, pointing to Phillip. “Then go get Doctor Lormand. I imagine he’ll want to examine what’s left of that creature.”

  “You’ll stay here?” Edan almost shouted the words. “By yourself?”

  “The thing is dead. Go on. Get Phillip out of here. He smells.”

  “You’re either the bravest man I’ve ever met, or else you’re a damned fool.”

  “Probably a combination of both. Go on. Just leave me your flashlight.”

  He watched the taillights vanish into the soft night.

  Sheriff Vallot had commented that he doubted Phillip would say anything about this night; he probably could not remember it. Or would not remember it.

  Pat shone the narrow beam of light from the flashlight onto the body of the beast. The carcass seemed smaller in death, as most things do.

  “Ugly son-of-a-bitch,” Pat remarked.

  “Happy now, Strange?” The voice seemed to drift out of the night. Madame Bauterre’s voice.

  Pat did not look around; something told him there would be nothing there.

  “Not particularly,” he said, feeling the low that always follows the nervous high of combat. “But I did satisfy my mind.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your . . . friends can be stopped.”

  “So you are now a believer?”

  “Not entirely,” The words popped from his mouth. “But I can see the ugly thing with my own eyes.”

  “You puzzle me, Strange. I will admit that. I have seen mortals through the ages—three centuries of watching people, witnessing their behavior—yet you are not afraid. There was one in France, two hundred years ago, just like you. His name was Duralde. A relative, perhaps?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Pity. Had you been it would have made a much more interesting game.”

  “Game?”

  “My . . . family succeeded in terrorizing him to the point of insanity. We finally broke him, Strange. Just as I shall break you.”

  “Don’t count on it, lady.”

  Her laugh was evil.

  “Don’t you want to know how I can do all these things, Strange? Appear and disappear? Work my magic? Explain how I have lived for centuries? Talk to you without form or shape? Aren’t you a bit curious?”

  “Would I understand it if you told me?”

  “Ah! The mark of an intelligent man. Your physical appearance belies your mind, Strange.”

  “I’m just an ex-soldier, lady. Hard-headed. Just plow ahead and damn the consequences.”

  The night wind picked up, sighing through the granite and marble of the graveyard, producing a song not unlike a softly sung dirge.

  “You tell me this, Strange: what is to prevent my delaying my revenge? Waiting you out; wearing you down? Chipping away at you?”

  “The obvious answer would be your health—in your. . . ah . . . human form. B
ut I think there is more to it than that. I think you have to finish this . . . mission of yours before—or probably on—the night your husband was killed.”

  “I was right,” her voice drifted disembodied to him. “You are an intelligent man. I can see why you were chosen. Are you a religious man. Strange?”

  Funny, Pat thought, she knows everything else about me—why would she not know that? “No,” he said. “I haven’t been to church in years.”

  “That’s not what I asked, Strange. I asked if you were a religious man?”

  “I believe in God Almighty—a Supreme Being, yes, of course. One only has to look about him to see that all this was not created by accident; some form of intellect was behind it all.”

  Lightning licked across the sky. Something close to fear touched Pat. He could have sworn he heard a deep voice saying, “Bah! He is no more intelligent than I.”

  “What the hell was that?” Pat asked.

  “You got part of it right, Strange,” Victoria laughed. “Yes, so you do experience fear. Very good, Strange. You will, I assure you, experience much more.”

  “The devil?” Pat asked in a whisper. “Is that why you asked if I was a religious man?”

  The wind sighing moodily through the graveyard was his only reply.

  “Answer mel” Pat’s voice was hard, his fingers aching from his tight hold on the riot gun.

  “We’ll talk later, Strange. Your friends are fast approaching.”

  A surge of wind, a foul odor, and the night was once more his. He stood alone in the cemetery.

  “Wait a minute!” Pat yelled. “Come back here—you whore of the devil!”

  “How dare you?” her voice lashed at him, fouling the night with a stinking fan of air.

  “If you’re so damned tough, lady; if you can do so much—why don’t you kill me? Obviously, I stand in your way. What’s the matter, are you afraid of me? A mortal? No. There has to be more to it than that. Come on, level with me.”

  The wind became a whistling, invisible shroud, howling through the cemetery, picking up small twigs and dirt, hurling them at Pat, stinging his exposed flesh.

  Victoria laughed at him. “I could kill you before the muscle in your chest pumped another drop of blood. Don’t ever doubt that, Strange.”

  “No,” Pat said quietly. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you can. There’s something funny about all this; I don’t even know whether it’s really happening. But let’s assume it is real for the moment.”

  “Damn you, Strange!” she squalled.

  Pat smiled. But his smile was shaky. “So I’ve got to be having some outside help, right?”

  Her only reply was an ugly hissing, her breath, the winds, hot and stinking.

  “What happens if your mission is not completed by the night of your husband’s death?” Pat changed the subject, for he felt the mere idea of God helping him was too absurd to even consider.

  No reply. Only the sighing of the wind.

  “Your granddaughter told me I couldn’t kill those things with lead,” he pointed to the dead beast. “But obviously, I did. So are you losing your strength?”

  A tombstone was suddenly ripped from the ground and hurled at him. Pat threw himself on the ground, the heavy stone missing him by only inches.

  “Guess not,” he muttered. “So much for my accuracy with snap deductions. All right, lady, tell me this: these creatures, all right, werewolves, if you will—and you, too, are you spawns of the devil?”

  No reply.

  Pat brushed the dirt from his trousers. “Come on, lady!” he needled her. “Stop all this fucking around and answer my questions.”

  “I’ll break you,” she hissed at him, her voice strong through the sudden howling of winds. “And I’ll have you, Strange. As mine! To do with as I please. For as long as I choose—centuries.”

  Pat watched as Sheriff Vallot’s prowl car pulled into the drive, its lights isolating him in the wind’s fury.

  “Merciful God!” Doctor Lormand said, his eyes fixed on the wind-swept figure of the man. “What’s happening to him?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know,” Edan replied.

  “How you gonna have me, lady?” Pat laughed at the echoing voice in the night. “Poison my food?”

  “I’ll have your mind, Strange,” she hissed. “And I’ll have your soul. But . . . I . . . will . . . have . . . you!”

  She left him in a wave of wild laughter that Pat knew he alone was able to hear. Then the wind ceased its howling as if controlled by a switch. The graveyard was suddenly silent.

  Edan drove up to Pat, leaving the engine running, the lights on bright.

  “What was happening here?” Doctor Lormand asked.

  “I was speaking with Madame Bauterre,” Pat replied calmly. “She was telling me what she was going to do with me.” He turned to where the creature had fallen, pointing it out with the beam of his flashlight.

  “Damn!” Pat yelled.

  The hairy beast was gone. A bloodied, middle-aged man lay in its place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I know damn well you killed a loup-garou!” Edan said. “I saw it.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Pat said. He played the beam of his light on the man. “But I damn sure killed a hairy beast, not that man.”

  “Then death regressed it,” Don told them. “Brought it back to its original form.” He walked to the dead man, the others close behind him. “But who is he?”

  “I never saw him before,” Sheriff Vallot said. He looked around him. “I don’t understand any of this. All the yelling Phillip was doing; all the shooting Pat did; all the flashing lights, squalling tires . . . and not one person has come out to investigate.”

  “No one saw it, and no one heard it,” Pat said. “And I’ll bet you all you can expect more of this to happen in the town.”

  “What do you mean?” Edan asked.

  “You just wait. I don’t understand all that’s happened since Janette hired me to come here, but I got a funny feeling it’s gonna be the biggest thing I’ve ever taken part in. And I don’t know whether I’m gonna win or lose.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Edan complained.

  “I can’t say any more about it just now.”

  “Why?”

  Pat shook his head. “Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I just can’t.”

  “Then tell me this: how was Madame Bauterre talking to you? The little dog?”

  “No. I don’t know how. Black magic. Supernatural. The devil.” He blurted the last. “She said as much,” he managed to say. Pat looked uneasy for a moment, then said, “How is your friend, the drunk?”

  “In shock,” Doctor Lormand replied. “And for the first time I can remember, totally sober. The devil, Pat?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why . . . but for some reason, she can’t, or won’t, kill me. She did ask if I was a religious man. Never thought of myself as being one.”

  Edan forced a smile. “For a man who didn’t believe in the supernatural—or said he didn’t—you sure have come a long way in only a short time.”

  But Pat would only shrug. Why me? he silently questioned. If what I believe is true—why me? Why pick me, of all people? Your choice sucks . . . Sir.

  He did not expect any reply, and he was not disappointed.

  Pat stood silent for a moment, reflective. “I’m no student of the Bible or of literature, but if what I did tonight is real—and I guess it is—I can’t believe that those . . . beasts were put here on the earth by the same God we worship.”

  “I agree,” Doctor Lormand said. “But I don’t understand what you’re driving at.”

  Pat smiled in the night, his teeth flashing against his tanned face. “I’m getting there in my mind. But, man, my conclusion is wild!”

  “And that is . . .?” Edan asked.

  But Pat would only shake his head. “Not yet. I got to think this through. Somebody has just dumped a very heavy trip on me, and I�
�m not sure I want to go along for the ride.”

  “Pat! You’re not making any sense,” Don protested.

  “Maybe not to you.” He shrugged. “Maybe not to me, either. Where are you going to keep the body of that . . . thing over there?”

  “In Blanchet’s cooler. Why?”

  “Because I want Janette to see it.”

  “Again, why?”

  “Because I think it’s a relative of hers.”

  “Good God!” Edan blurted. “Who?”

  “Uncle, maybe. I don’t think it’s her father. I think he was weak and Victoria disposed of him.”

  “Pat?” Doctor Lormand said patiently. “Are you sure you feel all right? Man, you’re not making any sense.”

  “I’m okay. Take me back to Amour House.”

  “Back there?” Edan said, his words horror-filled. “Man, why?”

  “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”

  “You’re nutsl” Doctor Lormand informed him, rather bluntly and most unprofessionally.

  “No,” Pat replied slowly. “I think for the first time in my life, or at least in a long, long time, I’m going to do something worthwhile.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Pat was walking up to the house, he heard a faint rustling by the side of the house. Spinning, he ran to the dark side of the home in time to see a figure racing toward the bayou. Pat flipped on Sheriff Vallot’s flashlight and caught the figure just as it turned around. The face was caught in the beam for only a second, but that was enough. Pat clicked off the flashlight, smiling as he did so. Things are getting curiouser and curiouser, he thought. But definitely moving toward the truth.

  He walked up to the door of the huge old mansion. Only one light was burning in the entire house, and that was in Janette’s quarters. Pat pushed open the door and stepped into the dark foyer.

  A scream ripped the darkness as something foul and evil hurled itself at him in a shapeless, stinking form. Pat did not flinch, but he sensed all that was evil seeking entrance into his mind, his soul. The shapeless, misty substance moved around him like the tentacles of a Medusa. He suppressed a large, imaginary yawn.