We settled down for the night on the floor on Deputy Kinnard's living room. Adam and I positioned ourselves against the wall closest to the window, in the unspoken hope that we would be missed by anything crashing through the window in the night. I fell asleep fairly quickly, vaguely aware of Adam sitting upright next to me. He poked me awake about midnight, when he couldn't stay awake any longer, and I took the watch. I tried to position myself so I could see through the chink in the curtains without being obvious from the outside. About 4:00 in the morning I was about to drift off so I poked Adam again. He refused to get up, but Kathy woke up and heard us whispering and said she'd watch.

Some time later-it could have been 15 minutes, could have been an hour-Kathy woke me and Adam again and said she'd heard a tap at the window. We were dressed and awake in an instant; Kathy and I had our guns out. Adam peeked out and saw Ian Maguire on the porch. He seemed nervous, and said he needed help. I was intending to pull him inside suddenly, take him by surprise, and demand to know what the hell was going on, at gunpoint if need be. He was a big man, but two of us were armed and I expected Kathy knew a few tricks as well as the ones I knew for breaking resistance. I figured the less time any of us were visible from the street, the better. Kathy was against the idea of bringing him inside. She handed me the shotgun. But before either of us could act, Adam insisted he go outside and talk to Maguire, because he knew him and trusted him.

"Wait-" I said, but he already had the door open. I was right after him. What happened next was a blur. I saw a shadow to the left, away from where Maguire stood on the porch. A large man with a pistol grabbed Adam from behind. At the same moment, someone came at me and tried to grab my shotgun. We wrestled over it briefly; I tried to smash him in the face with the stock while wresting it out of his hands. I managed to regain my hold on the weapon, but at that point I got a better view of the circumstances. We were outnumbered and outgunned, and they had Adam as a hostage. Bitterly, I put up my hands, and someone took the shotgun away. Another goon had Kathy covered. Maguire stood off to one side and watched unhappily. Altogether there were five of them. Delaney's "enforcers," no doubt. There was nothing we could do.

They handcuffed us behind our backs, including Hazel who had woken up after the initial struggle, and Kinnard, who had come downstairs to investigate. Maguire stayed behind. The five of us were thrown in the back of a van. My mind was racing. I had visions of our bodies being found up in the mountains next spring. The van drove out of town a small distance, near the Delaney Mining facility, and stopped. The goons hauled us out and shoved us into a clearing a little off the road. It was still dark, but the waning moon was still close enough to full to cast some light as it sank toward the west.

Adam was trying to talk to the goons, blathering something about us not knowing anything. "Adam, shut up," I growled, but he kept going. One of the goons finally backhanded him across his mouth. That shut him up. My fists clenched uselessly in the cuffs. Nobody hits my little brother, dammit! And I couldn't do a damn thing. Some cop I turned out to be. Instead of protecting Adam and Hazel (and Kathy, though I figured she could handle herself in a fair fight), here we were, off in the woods away from any witnesses or any chance of escape, and most likely about to be shot through the head. I was even more certain of this last part when the goons insisted on standing behind us and refused to let us turn around. Desperately I was thinking, how can we get out of this alive?

But instead of executing us immediately, they said their boss wanted to talk to us. At that moment a man walked into the clearing. He was tall and thin, old, and well-dressed. Maximillian Delaney. The man in the portrait in town hall.

"You've caused me a good deal of trouble," he said dryly. I guess he wanted us to know that before he killed us. Hazel, at this point, opened her big mouth and declared, "This is no way to treat a lady!" Delaney turned his cold gaze on her. I didn't know what was happening, but I sensed that I was real glad it wasn't me that his eyes were boring into. Hazel looked visibly struck. If this man was as powerful as Stonehill said, perhaps he could hurt our minds. If that was the case, Hazel seemed to be his first target.

At that moment we heard chanting coming from the woods around us. It was Stonehill and his friends. Stonehill was beating a small drum. For a crazy second I thought of the climax scene in "Thunderheart," where the FBI agents are standing off against each other in this ravine, and it looks bad for the Good Guys, when suddenly all these Indians appear on the ridge, all around the gully, and the Bad Guys are defeated after all.

But here there were only five Native Americans, all of them old men. Delaney turned his attention to them and raised a hand, as if fighting off whatever it was they were sending his direction. The chanting faltered. Now was our chance, if there was ever going to be one. With the goons' and Delaney's attention focused on the Native Americans circling the clearing, Adam and I charged into Delaney with the hardest body check we could manage. I stumbled and rolled off to the side while Adam landed on Delaney's chest. At the same moment there was a flash of silver as one of the old men hurled the sky disc at Delaney. Fortunately for my brother, it landed short, thudding into the snow. Then all hell broke loose.

I got to my feet in time to plow into one of the goons, who had finally reacted to his boss's being threatened. He had his gun out and was heading for Adam, who was trying to keep Delaney's head in the snow without the aid of hands, when I knocked into him and we both went down. As I wrestled with the goon, my hands uselessly cuffed behind my back, I was vaguely aware of Hazel attempting to pick up the disc and drop it on Delaney. Then the wolf appeared out of nowhere and took down one of the guards, grabbing him by the throat. Next the goon I was flailing against was hauled off me and thrown toward the trees. The half-man, half-wolf figure I now understood to be Maguire said to me gruffly, "Turn around," and next thing I knew he was unlocking my cuffs. I was too surprised to do anything but mumble "Thanks."

Looking quickly around the clearing, I saw Adam tussling with one of the other goons, then saw Kathy with the sky disc. Her hands were freed, and as I watched, she took a solid swipe at Delaney's neck with the disc.

I flinched involuntarily as the silver disc sliced off his head. But instead of blood and gore pouring out, there was only blackness, as if Delaney's entire body was filled not with blood but black void. The Darkness bound in human form, Stonehill had said. We watched as the darkness spilled from his body, bubbling and dissolving his skin and spreading across the snow like an impossibly black liquid. In seconds, there was nothing left, not even a stain.

I picked up one of the fallen goons' weapons and attempted to stop the remaining two as they fled toward their van, but the gun jammed. We were left alone in the clearing, with two dead goons, an unconscious one (Adam had managed to knock him out), a werewolf, and the memory of spreading, oozing blackness from what had appeared to be a man. Auto-pilot kicked in and I went over to Hazel and Adam with the handcuff keys Maguire had given me, freed them and helped them stand up. We looked toward Maguire, who now stood before Kathy with the sky disc, and heard him say "Kill me." Obligingly and without hesitation, she lopped off his head. I felt sick. I think I understood now what he had meant when he'd said "Help me," and I was relieved for his sake, but stunned and horrified at the same time. I turned to Hazel and Adam to make sure they were all right.

Stonehill and his cronies came out of the woods then. They'd brought a horse with a sledge tied behind it. They said they'd take care of things, and loaded up the three bodies and dragged them off into the woods. I never thought I'd say it, but I hope they hid the bodies real well, especially Maguire's. He had returned to human form, and there was no way his death could be attributed to an animal attack. It would be better if he remained undiscovered, just another Missing Person.

Stonehill's men returned from their burial duty and did their best to obliterate the tracks. Then we loaded our one unconscious goon onto the sledge and began the walk back into town. It was getting light by this time. We went to the sheriff's station and carried our perp into one of the cells. Adam and Hazel waited outside with Stonehill while the other four Native Americans returned wherever they had come from, and Kinnard, Kathy and I focused our attention on the prisoner.

He was surly, and did not believe us when we told him his boss was dead. With a little persuasion, however, he told us where his cohorts had likely gone. There was a small house out back of the Delaney mansion. We pressed him about Carson and he admitted Delaney's boys had taken him out-not him, personally, he said, but one of the other guys. He said Carson's body was in the ravine behind the hotel.

Then we heard something outside. We hurried to the door. Without sirens but with lights flashing, not one or two but eight police cars were pulling up outside. It was about damn time! I caught a glimpse of Kathy handing the sky disc to Stonehill, who disappeared around the far side of the building, then I hailed the approaching officers with my badge.

The rest was a flurry of organized chaos as various squads unpacked their equipment, K-9 units, medical teams, and dispatched detectives to interview myself and Kinnard. The man in charge introduced himself to me as Detective Danny Johnson of Aspen's Second Precinct. I was dimly aware of someone getting out of the second squad car and hurrying over to Kathy, saying something about how worried he had been. He was not in uniform; I figured him to be one of the Aspen detectives. He said his name was D.D.A., but I didn't catch what it stood for, if he said. He turned out to be Kathy's brother. Kathy took him off to one side and from then on I was distracted with the debriefing. I said nothing of werewolves or of Delaney. The man was supposed to be dead anyway. Who would believe it? Conveniently, he hadn't left a body.

An hour or two later Adam returned to the sheriff's station, having retrieved our things from Kinnard's house and checked us out of the hotel. The goons had abducted us but left our weapons behind. I was glad to get my gun back and glad that I wouldn't have to explain how I had managed to lose it on vacation. I didn't see Kathy after that. Adam said she had gone back to Kinnard's with him to retrieve her weapon and belongings, but apparently she had left with her brother. Well, it was no skin off my back, not getting to say goodbye. What the hell would we have said, anyway?

As soon as we could, we booked it for Aspen. The sense of relief from leaving Miner's Folly behind us was palpable. It carried us all the way to Perkins, where we stopped long enough to tank up on coffee and pancakes, then hit the road for the three-hour drive to Boulder. We were exhausted, but wanted to get the hell away from the whole area. Hazel slept in the back while Adam and I kept each other awake and shared the driving.

Epilogue
We spent a few more quiet and utterly, blissfully uninteresting days in Boulder. Hazel showed us some nice, dull museums. Then Adam and I flew back to Chicago. I almost wanted to kiss the ground in gratitude when we finally emerged from the airport-but then, it is Chicago. I contented myself with a deep breath of dirty air.

Adam had a message on my machine when we got back to my apartment. Somebody was interested in interviewing him, and asked him to call back at his earliest convenience. Maybe his enforced "vacation" (unemployment) is near an end as well. For myself, I could hardly wait to get back to work dealing with regular murderers and criminals, where I have at least some idea what to expect, the phones work, we have hospitals and medical examiners and morgues and an entire city full of police back-up, and most of all, no werewolves.

Previous Entry (3)       Back to Journals      Next Entry (5)

  [Home] [Introduction] [Characters] [Scrapbook] [Rules]