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“Samson and Igor,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, red-eyed. I couldn’t afford to get emotional, but the levy was threatening to break all over again at the thought of them safe in my arms just hours ago. "If I can get in the door, I can hot-wire it." It was the only car in the world I could, and while I’d made fun of Gram at the time, I was so glad for what she’d taught me.
And angry she’d never explained why.
He nodded. “Run on to your car. If you find someone else’s vehicle abandoned along the way, or someone offers you a lift, use your best judgment. I'll meet you there in thirty minutes. If you get your car started, don’t wait; drive somewhere safe and call my office. Ask for Jorge. He’ll see you’re safe.” The skin beneath Caelan’s palm darkened into a distorted paw pad. “We’ll go down together. Hang tight, alright? Promise I won’t throw you off.”
The transformation took hold. When it was over, the breeze ushered away the steam and left a larger, angrier animal in the sheriff's place. The wolf lowered himself impatiently, ears back, fangs drawn. When I pointed at the bag, he lifted it in his jaw. I climbed onto the slick mass of bloody fur, clinging to his neck, and then we were on the ground crouched in glass beside the deputy's smashed car.
The wolf cocked his head as if to say 'told you so.' The car’s dangling side mirror caught the eyeshine of an approaching shadow through the streetlight.
Head low, the sheriff sprinted at the dead beast, caught his slower moving opponent by the underside of the chin and dragged it twisting to the ground. I snatched the bag and ran down the opposite end of the street, then downhill toward the garage.
I took the distance in intervals, bursts of speed interspersed with hiding places around parked cars and flipped restaurant tables. I wasn't sure how many were out there, but I knew the death toll at Avon. The necromancer had more than enough bodies to decimate Nokhurst Crossing.
Luckily the hour was late, or early, depending on the view, but there were enough people among the bars, and several of them drunk, to generate a fair amount of carnage in the streets.
People who were fast, or lucky, enough to shelter from the wrath of the undead had done so. Bleeding, hurt, alive, dying: sometimes we made eye contact from our hiding places as decaying shadows crossed between.
My heart tightened at the thought of Samson's corpse wandering the yard. Pressure built behind my eyes. Closing them, I wiped my cheek, taking several big, slow breaths. Sounds of a distant fight echoed through the shops. Laden with books, the plastic bag had left a sore line on my hand.
It was hard to ground myself when the ground I knew and loved had been swept out from underneath my feet.
The garage was abandoned at this hour. As I passed into the low-lit underground, I walked by the attendants' booth. Bars to block and allow car access had been lifted on both sides. The booth door was open but empty.
At the first corner leading deeper into the heart of the lot, a soft wheeze caught my attention. Pressed against a cold pillar, I paused to listen.
My car was a few stories higher. I needed to reach the elevator or stairs, preferably the stairs so Caelan could track me and I could observe the scene without being set upon the instant the elevator doors opened, but that meant crossing at least half of the lower level in the open.
The wheezing continued at a quicker tempo. I peeked around the corner. In the center aisle a purse lay upended.
Beyond spilled lipstick and a checkbook, a young woman crouched between a car and a jeep, halfway safe to the stairs. Her panting, panicked commentary over a cell phone filled the air. She squatted in a spreading pool of crimson, one hand on her waist, the other braced on the spare tire. Sweat glistened on her face, accompanied by a smile when she spotted me. She snapped and pointed at the purse’s strewn contents.
“My keys!"
Sinking to the ground, I lifted a hand to my lips, judging how and whether it was safe to get to her.
“Keys!” She slapped the jeep. “Mine. Let's go.”
I mouthed a plea for quiet, but she continued tapping, gesturing, wheezing into her cell.
Two vehicles to her right, a bruised, distended snout rose over a car hood. White-eyed, it smiled with a gator-like satisfaction. Black rot oozed off its worming tongue, falling upon the vehicle’s hood in slow, loud splats.
Placing one palm flat on the hood, it leaned in the direction of the jeep and sniffed.
Unaware, the woman eased toward the front of the jeep.
She was making a go for the keys, I realized belatedly. Crouched against the pillar, there was nothing I could do, no sound or gesture that wouldn’t draw attention to myself in the process.
The pop-pop of claws punching through metal made her pause, and then her phone slipped through her sweaty hands and hit the concrete with a wet clatter.
The werewolf shot off the car hood and onto the jeep’s, reaching its head and one arm through the gap between vehicles to catch her.
She screamed, threw herself on the ground, managed half her body beneath the vehicle when the werewolf’s claws caught her foot. It tore her up and out from beneath the vehicle, sinking its fangs into the flesh of her thigh. Blood ran down her belly and neck as she beat at it, helpless.
With its prey as good as immobilized, it let her drop. Her head hit the ground at a terrible angle and she went quiet. It climbed off the roof of the vehicle and onto the ground to drag her into better position to feed, inadvertently kicking the cell phone, through which a person was asking, in increasing desperation, what the hell was happening.
Gutting the woman momentarily consumed the werewolf’s attention. I fled into the attendant's booth and eased shut the door.
