Warren Murphy: Wolf's Bane

What had attracted him to Rita in the first place? Thinking back, he knew it was her body, back when she was dancing at the Velvet Club, outside Metairie. Looking at her now, three kids and all those bonbons down the road, no one would guess that she had once been an A-1 looker.

As for the brats...

Too late, he told himself. You're in it now, and no mistake. A man does what he has to do.

Yeah, right.

On Friday night, not knowing it would be his last, Bubba Francisco parked his trash cans at the curb, for pickup in the morning, and sat up to watch the best of Letterman. That wasn't much, in his opinion, but the fella with the big chin didn't do much for him, either, and the flick on HBO was some damn thing with Whoopi Goldberg.

Wonders never ceased.

Before he turned in for the night, he poured himself another double shot of Beam and went around to check the house, each door and window in its turn. He was supposed to be secure, up there in Cadillac, but you could never really tell.

The bloodhounds could be anywhere.

OUTSIDE, THE LEADER of the pack sat waiting for the windows to go dark. That done, he waited half an hour more, in case the man was pleasuring his woman, then he tacked on fifteen minutes more for them to doze. No time was ever truly wasted if you used it properly, in this case sniffing out the night breeze, studying the deeper shadows with his yellow eyes and looking for a trap. If there were hunters here, he had to give them credit for the way they had concealed themselves. He had to give them special credit for the control they exercised. His own craving was so strong it was almost too much to stand.

When he was sure as sure could be that he wasn't about to walk into an ambush, he went back to fetch the others. They were waiting for him in the van, unsettled by the city sounds and smells perhaps, but calm enough that he wasn't required to warn them about making noise. Six pairs of eyes intently focused on him as he opened up the sliding door. "Come brothers, sister."

They piled out and formed a ring around him, claws tap-tapping on the asphalt. When he started walking, after he had locked the van, two of them automatically took point, the others hanging back. The sleek bitch held her place beside him, on his left. They watched for traffic, crossing streets, and kept to shadows where they could. The residential neighborhood had streetlights at the intersections, but the houses in between were dark and still.

Surrounded as he was by things of man, the leader of the pack could smell the woods nearby. The neighborhood was no more than a half mile from Lake Cadillac and William Mitchell State Park, with Lake Mitchell and the Manistee National Forest a mile farther east. He wished they had the time to do some hunting for the hell of it, but business took priority. Within an hour, tops, they would be homeward bound. By this time Sunday, he could turn the pack out on familiar ground. They could rejoin the rest of the pack and run amok if they were so inclined.

But first they had a job to do.

He didn't know the target's name and didn't care. The men who hired him had supplied a photograph, which he had briefly studied, then devoured. It was his theory that ingesting snapshots of his prey gave him an edge. Before the men he hunted ever met him in the flesh, he had consumed a portion of their souls and thereby weakened them in preparation for the kill.

Or maybe he was full of shit.

Some thought so, back at home, though none of them would say it to his face. Even the ones who knew him best might doubt he had the "power," but they never crossed him. Never more than once, that is. The leader of the pack possessed a fearsome reputation, which was well deserved. Even the bad boys knew it wasn't smart to piss him off.

The target had a five-foot wooden fence around his backyard, as if it would keep anybody out. The leader of the pack went over in a flash, the others following and forming up beside him in the darkness, waiting while he watched and smelled the house.

There would be no alarm, because the target thought that he was safe. You change a name, mock up some history. Time flies. What else was there to do? He was supposed to have protectors running interference for him in the big, bad world, but they were not in evidence this night. Except for bitch and whelps, the bastard would be on his own.

The leader of the pack advanced until he stood before the back door of the house. He crouched and sniffed around the doorknob, smelling whoever had touched it last. A tasty child-smell, meat so tender it would slip right off the bone, no problem. He could almost taste it now.

He straightened, threw back his shaggy head and called upon the power. It responded instantly, fire racing through his veins. He clenched his fists and felt his muscles swelling, straining at the denim fabric of his shirt. Long nails like talons bit into his palms. One of his brothers snarled, but he was used to that. They meant no harm.

He felt the power throbbing in him as he reached out for the doorknob, took it in his hand and twisted it with all his might. The lock resisted for a moment, then gave out a sharp metallic snap. The door swung open and he stepped inside.

He hesitated for a moment, just across the threshold, listening and sniffing at the house, to learn if any of its occupants had heard the noise. When no alarm was sounded, he stepped forward and the others joined him in the kitchen, heavy with the smell of good meat spoiled by fire. He understood that men preferred to char the sweet flesh they consumed, but he was still revolted by the practice.

He would take the real thing, raw and bloody, every time.

He led the pack beyond the kitchen, to a darkened hallway, picking up the odor of tobacco smoke and something else-perfume, cologne, some kind of makeup?-that would lead him to the target's bitch. He paused outside the room where two boys slumbered, opening the door without a sound and nodding to the darkness, smiling as a couple of his brothers broke formation, peeling off to do their work. The next room was a girl's. Another silent signal, and a supple shadow left the pack to go in search of something edible.

That left two brothers and the bitch to follow as the leader of the pack proceeded to a final doorway, also closed. He went down on all fours to sniff the carpet, baring yellow fangs. The sound that rumbled from his throat was out of place in human company.

He reached up for the doorknob, hesitating, head cocked so that one ear almost touched the door. Was that a voice he heard inside? The leader of the pack stood and squared his massive shoulders, grinning fiercely as he turned the knob and stepped into the master bedroom. Taloned fingers found the light switch, flicked it and a ceiling fixture blazed on, noonday bright.

In bed, the target and a woman with a double chin were sputtering toward consciousness. They saw the leader of the pack through bleary eyes, but it was still enough to startle them and make the woman scream.

"Surprise," he told them as he started toward the bed. "We just dropped in to have a bite."

ED BEASLEY HADN'T HEARD such screaming since ...well, come to think of it, he'd never heard such screaming in his life. Oh, maybe on the late show, when they had a horror movie on, but he was more inclined to watch the Playboy channel. The noise was coming from next door.

He glanced in the direction of the bedside clock and saw that it was nearly 1:30 a.m. Too late for parties in the neighborhood, and he had never known his neighbors, the Franciscos, as the entertaining kind. Kept mostly to themselves, they did, and there were no kids old enough to raise this kind of hell, unless...

He fought a brief and indecisive struggle with his sheet and blanket, dragging them behind him as he tumbled out of bed and made a beeline for the window. Pulling back the drapes, he peered across a redwood fence at the Francisco house. No lights were in evidence, and he waited for the screams to be repeated.