Super-brief summary:

Morning: Ray and Adam go locate Deputy Chad Kinnard, go back and deal with stuff at the sheriff's office; Kathy & Hazel go do something else. Lunch: we all meet at pub and talk about stuff. After lunch Stonehill shows up; Kathy & Hazel go to talk to him; Adam and Ray figure they'd better be in on it too. A whole lot of arguing; finally they decide to go get sky disc.

Get supplies, tramp up into mountains late afternoon/early evening. Ray stays at entrance to keep watch, Kathy & Hazel go down shaft to find sky disc; Adam goes partway down. Successfully retrieve sky disc, return to town, drop off Stonehill.

Go to pub to unwind. Kathy & Hazel leave to go see about lodging for the night ('cause we don't want to stay at the hotel!). Kathy calls the boys on the walkie-talkie and cries wolf. Two, in fact.

Adam and Ray get to newspaper office in time to see two big wolves fighting. Then one morphs. The bigger one kills the smaller one (the first to morph), and it morphs too. Ray shoots the larger one and it runs away. The dead one is human shaped again and we are surprised to find it's Reginald Thompson, the guest at the hotel with the toy poodle. We call Deputy Kinnard. He agrees to let us stay at his place for the night. Kathy and Hazel go there, Adam and Ray go back to the hotel briefly, then return to town & go to Kinnard's house.

Well, my first priority was locating the remaining law enforcement officer in town, Chad Kinnard. While Kathy and Hazel wandered off to do their own thing, Adam and I drove over to Kinnard's house. Notifying someone of the death of a loved one has got to be one of the least pleasant parts of my job. Notifying a cop of the death of their partner is just as fun. In this case I had the dubious honor of informing Deputy Kinnard that not one but both of his colleagues were dead.

After he got dressed (we seem to have woken him up), he came down to the sheriff's office with us to see for himself. Adam stayed outside; I accompanied Kinnard in as far as the front office, to be there if he needed me, but to give him space. Deputy Dermont lay where we'd left him, in a pool of congealed blood I estimated to be about six hours old. From the back hall, past where Sheriff Wilheim lay, I could hear Kinnard puking his guts out.

When Kinnard had collected himself we looked around the office some more. There was nothing we could do with the bodies except lock them in a cell to prevent any further creatures gnawing on them. The town had no clinic or morgue or anything. I didn't envy Kinnard his task of dealing with the situation. I helped him move the bodies of his colleagues into one of the cells. In the course of this, I noticed shards of glass embedded in Dermont's hair and skin. It appeared as though he had been knocked through the window. I pointed this out to Kinnard and he agreed, suggesting that perhaps Dermont had stepped outside for a smoke when the wolf attacked him and knocked him back through the window. It was evident that he had been taken by surprise, but the sheriff hadn't. His weapon was drawn and we found three casings near his body in the back hall. I could only find two bullet holes in the walls, though.

Feeling somehow as though we ought to have done more for the fallen officers than leave them in a cell with blankets over them, I left Kinnard to call the boys in Aspen back, and went outside. Adam had followed the tracks as far as the woods across the street. There was blood in the tracks, but it was impossible without forensics to tell whose blood it was. In any case, there were no drops of blood, which one would have expected if Wilheim had hit it. Kinnard came out and reported that they were still cleaning up the avalanche mess in the pass, and that a helicopter was not likely.

Silently fuming at the whole situation, I accompanied Adam to the pub. On the way we passed Kathy's Subaru, and we pulled over for a brief road-side conference. They had evidently found out some "interesting" things this morning, but wouldn't say more there on the street. They left briefly to visit Town Hall again, and we met them at the pub for lunch and some serious talk.

It was past the regular lunch-hour and we had the place mostly to ourselves. In eager, conspiratorial tones, Hazel recounted how she and Kathy had gone to Universal Mineral, the mining company which had made some kind of contract with Damien Carson. Remembering the letter, I asked if they had talked to Raymond Gurney. No, Hazel said, but she'd been able to distract a guard and enable Kathy to break into his office. Great, just what I didn't need to hear! These girls are going to get us into trouble yet. Kathy reported she'd found a "secret" panel in Gurney's desk that contained a large amount of cash and a pistol.

We fell to arguing again, Adam and I trying to talk some sense into these two (especially Hazel, who evidently has seen "Indiana Jones" way too many times). Exasperated, Kathy finally gave up and left the building. Adam and I tried to persuade Hazel to leave this issue and stop talking about breaking and entering, when Kathy popped her head back inside and motioned to Hazel. Hazel jumped up to go with Kathy. Adam and I exchanged glances, and hurried to follow them.

Outside, Stonehill had returned and was speaking to Kathy. I felt it my sense of duty to stick with these two ladies and do what I could to talk them out of this nonsense. Adam evidently felt the same. And if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess the saying goes. So instead of throwing up our hands and walking away, Adam and I joined Stonehill and the ladies in Kathy's Subaru for another conference.

Stonehill pretty much said the same things he had said this morning, stressing their need for help and how it was becoming harder and harder for them (his people?) to keep Delaney "bound in this form." He said there had been vicious animal attacks every ten years or so because Delaney's power waxed and waned, and right now he was on the upswing again. Stonehill said they needed the sky disc to perform whatever ritual it was that would keep Delaney subdued, but that there were only five of them left (his shamans or whatever) and time was pressing.

We argued more, in the end going with Kathy partly out of a sense of duty to protect her and Hazel (who was also keen on going), and partly because Kathy was driving and we were in the back. Hazel purchased some supplies in the general store and Stonehill described to us how to get to the mine shaft. He rode with us as far as the car would go, then waited in hiding nearby for the duration of our excursion.

I took the opportunity as we were strapping on our snowshoes to have a quiet, serious "chat" with Kathy. I was not entirely satisfied with her whole story, and if I was going to risk my neck and my brother's, I needed to know exactly who I was working with.

We tramped across the snow and found the mine shaft just as Stonehill had described it. The entrance was boarded over, but it did not prove too difficult to remove the boards. I had been dreading this moment, when we would descend into the dark, unknown confines of this abandoned mine shaft. My heart was racing and I was having trouble breathing, though Hazel and Kathy probably would have thought it was from the exertion of getting to the site, if they noticed it at all. Adam, bless his heart, suggested that someone ought to stay at the mine's entrance to keep watch, and I volunteered.

The others penetrated to the back of the tunnel, which went about 20 yards back into the hillside before it ended in a vertical shaft. I kept one of our ski radios and Adam gave the other to Kathy. For all the good it did: once they were down the shaft, the signal didn't carry. Hazel and Kathy climbed down the shaft while Adam waited at the top. We waited an interminable time, not speaking, though I could hear Adam at the end of the tunnel. Finally he said he was going to climb down and try to hear or see what the ladies were up to. Then I was alone in the entrance of the mine, straining my eyes outward into the gathering twilight, and straining my ears in all directions. An eternity passed, which my watch measured as less than an hour.

I don't think I breathed again until the three of them were safely back up the shaft and we had strapped on our snowshoes again and were tramping away from the hole. Kathy and Hazel said little of their excursion down the shaft, but they had, in fact, found the "sky disc." I didn't get a real close look at it, but it appeared silver in color and was about the size of a large pizza. It had finger-holes in it like a bowling ball, and the outer edge was knife sharp. The Frisbee of Doom. Stonehill was waiting for us when we returned to the Subaru. Hazel and Kathy turned the disc over to him, but not before Hazel took a rubbing of the symbols etched in both sides of the disc.

We got back into town about 6:30. It felt odd; it seemed like the trip up to the mine shaft had taken a hundred years. We were really only gone for a couple of hours at the most. We dropped off Stonehill at the edge of town and retreated to the pub for some well-earned beers and dinner. When they had finished, Kathy and Hazel went to check with the newspaper editor, Justin, who they were trying to convince to give them a place to sleep that night. None of us really wanted to return to the hotel, though I had an uneasy feeling that whoever we spent the night with, we'd be putting them in danger.

Minutes after they left, we had an alarmed call on the radio from Kathy. She said two wolves were outside the newspaper office. Adam and I jumped in our car and sprinted over there. With Adam driving, I retrieved the rifle from the back seat, which we'd borrowed from the sheriff's office that morning.

In the headlights as we approached we could see two enormous wolves in the street, tearing at each other. I urged Adam to plow into them with the CR-V, but he skidded to a stop about 20 yards from the fight. We watched as the larger wolf fastened its jaws around the throat of the smaller one. The smaller one went limp-and changed. The whole thing could not have taken more than a couple of seconds. The wolf shifted into something hairy that resembled something between a man and a wolf, and the next thing we knew we were looking at a dead man. I swung the car door open and drew a bead on the other beast with my rifle. It was looking around. Then it, too, shifted into that horrible half-man, half-wolf form, and looked toward us. I fired. It jumped with the impact of the bullet but did not go down. I thought I heard Kathy yelling "No!" I was tensing for another shot when the beast turned and fled into the nearby woods.

Kathy and Hazel came out of the newspaper office then, and Kathy reamed me for shooting the thing. "He was on our side," she was saying. Like hell. I had no intention of letting me or any of my friends be its next victim. Kathy was pissed at me for some reason; she seemed to think the wolf had spoken to her and asked for help. The only help I'm giving a f***ing werewolf is to send it back to hell where it came from.

I called Deputy Sheriff Kinnard on the CB. With the adrenaline in my system and confusion about what I had just seen, I told him there had been a shooting. Then I had to call him back and explain that there had been another wolf attack, with two wolves fighting; that I had shot at the thing, but it got away. When Kinnard arrived and asked about the second wolf, I said I had been mistaken. We did not mention that the second wolf had turned into the pathetic naked dead man lying in the street with his throat torn. We recognized him as one of the hotel guests, Reginald Thompson. Kinnard had no idea why the man would be naked, and we offered none. I noticed that in addition to the obviously fresh wound that had killed him, Thompson had another wound on his shoulder that looked to be a couple days old.

In light of the most recent attack and our reluctance to return to the hotel, Kinnard agreed to let us stay the night at his place. Kathy had been unable to locate Justin the newsman. Adam and I returned briefly to the hotel, claiming that we needed to retrieve our things. Kathy gave us their room key and asked us to get their stuff too. In fact, we had packed the car that morning to be ready to leave the second the pass opened up. My purpose in returning to the hotel was to check out Thompson's room.

I convinced the staff to let me into his room. Inside all appeared normal, except the man's poodle lay on the floor near the door, its neck snapped. I went through his belongings and found nothing of interest. The window was intact. The desk was scattered with papers; it appeared he was a writer. Adam had learned as much from the man himself when they had talked earlier. From the few pages I scanned, he seemed to have been attempting some kind of novel. His writing wasn't what I would call exceptional. I related all this to Adam as we left (he had collected the ladies' things from their room). His theory was that Thompson had been bitten by this other werewolf (hence the wound on his shoulder) and had killed his dog as he felt the change coming on, then left the hotel. It seemed as good a theory as any. I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

We returned to Kinnard's house and he let us in. Kathy was already asleep on the couch and Hazel was either sleeping upright or meditating. With borrowed blankets, we settled in for an uneasy night's sleep.

Previous Entry (2)       Back to Journals      Next Entry (4)

  [Home] [Introduction] [Characters] [Rules] [Tidbits]