Appetite For Destruction (The Wolf's Heart Journals Book 2) Page 2

  Another group reported that one of their friends had been pulled into the woods while they were navigating a trail at night, which is a bone-headed move by the way. They may as well have stuck “Eat me, I’m delicious” signs on themselves. They reported hearing movement in the underbrush and then, boom, their friend was gone. They heard animal like howls mixed with her screams which faded into the distance as whatever it was carried her off. That incident was labeled as a cougar attack. Which I have to admit was one of the more believable explanations they came up with that year.

  After stripping away the bullshit I had come to the conclusion that there was probably a small pack of wolves living in the park. Multiple wolves meant multiple hearts. I packed up gear and headed to Glacier National park.

  Like I said I could have tried tracking the wolves but instead I found a large group of hikers. I shadowed them during the day and then set up in whatever large tree I could find near their camp at night. It was a group of six dudes in their twenties. They made lots of noise, and after a couple days their scent was pretty strong. They were perfect.

  I spent four days watching the group before anything happened. I was about thirty feet up a large pine tree and a couple hundred feet from their camp. The night was getting deep and the kids had bedded down when the forest became silent. The normal sounds of insects and animals vanished. The air seemed to thicken. My focus sharpened. This was what I had been waiting for, I could feel it.

  The camp was nestled in a small circular clearing that was thirty feet across. Small thin pines ringed the clearing. The silvery light of a half-moon bathed everything in greys. With the werewolf heart powder coursing through my system, enhancing my senses, the moon light was more than enough to see everything clearly. I scanned the trees looking for movement. I saw nothing unusual. But a scent began to saturate the area. It was subtle at first. A sick-rotting stench. The smell of road kill in the hot sun. The smell slowly thickened. It turned into the thick gagging stench of a half-rotten corpse. It was so dense and visceral that I could almost feel it on my skin.

  The forest was still completely motionless. My eyes darted back and forth. That stench had me on edge. It wasn’t right. Werewolves on the hunt definitely had a smell but it was the musky smell of dog, not the stench of rot and decay. Something was not right.

  My eyes darted back and forth. As the stench grew sharper, my anxiety and fear increased.. My heart pounded. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I glanced down as I wiped the sweat away. That was when I saw him. A man stood at the base of my tree. I was taken aback. No one should have been able to get that close without me hearing them. I repeat, no one. I can hear a cat padding across a pillow.

  He was a big guy, six feet tall and wide. He wore a tan sheep skin jacket. One of the ranch hand style ones, with fluffy wool lining on the inside and the collar. A big, worn cowboy hat sat on his head. But his clothes were not really what concerned me. Moon light glittered in an almost hypnotizing way off the pistol in his right hand. It looked like an old Colt 1911 plated in silver. There was something about that gun. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly but something told me that it was far more than it appeared.

  My mind whirled as I studied him. He stood too still. And his head was cocked off to the side a little like he was listening for something. Who the fuck was he? How in the hell had he gotten there without me hearing or smelling him? Even in the thick stench I should have been able to pick out a human’s smell. With something for my mind to focus on, the panic that the stench put in me disappeared. My mind calmed and I turned everything over in my head. If I couldn’t smell him through the stench then it stood to reason that the smell came from him. He was obviously something unnatural. No human was quiet enough to sneak up on me.

  Those thoughts brought up several very unpleasant options. Maybe he was some sort of necromancer? Maybe he was some sort of powerful undead? Hence the smell. Oh, shit what if he was a powerful undead necromancer? Before my mind could fall further down that rabbit hole I decided that speculation was not helpful. I knew he was suspicious and he was focused on the hiker’s camp. Action would get me answers much faster than speculation. So, I slung my rifle over my shoulders, found a clear path through the branches and dropped to the ground behind him.

  My plan was simple. Drop to the ground. Punch him as hard as I could right in the back of the head. If he was some sort of supernatural badass and the first punch didn’t drop him then I would repeat that action until he stopped moving. I also entertained the idea of grabbing him and bashing him against the tree. It wasn’t a very subtle or nuanced strategy but I was new to the game at that point and brute force was my main tactic. Well, if I’m being honest with myself, it still is.

  The first part of my plan went great. I dropped down right behind him - ninja style. Part two started out well. I balled up my fist, drew back and sent an over hand right at the back of his head. That’s when the wheels fell off the wagon. My punch didn’t connect. His head moved in a very unhurried fashion to the right. It wasn’t like he jerked away. He flowed to the side like water. As he moved his head he turned to face me. If anyone else had done it I would have said that they had spun but that wasn’t the right description. It wasn’t fast enough to be a spin. It was a graceful smooth turn. His movements were efficient. No wasted motion.

  A lot went down real fast. His turn brought us face to face for the first time. What I saw surprised me. I was prepared for some beady eyed, thin mustached villain. Like a dude you would see tying young girls to railroad tracks. This guy,however, looked like the men in old WWII pictures. Steel eyed with a strong jaw. His face was lined and leathery, he looked to be about sixty but it was a hard sixty. Age had not softened this man. Quite the opposite in fact. He was made of old iron. My surprise at his features was replaced with shock and pain as twelve inches of steel slid between my ribs and ripped my lung open. Even with my ability to heal getting stabbed hurts like hell. This, however, was a whole new level of pain. The blade of his knife felt like it was made of lava. The steel burned my flesh and it felt like it was trying to burn my soul. That was when I heard the first screams from the hiker’s camp.

  Ole Quickdraw McStabby snapped his head around toward the screaming. He cursed under his breath. “I’ll be back for you.” He said as he slid the damnable blade out of me. I collapsed to the ground sucking air like a fish as he turned and ran toward the camp.

  With the blade out of me, the burning lessened, but it did not completely fade away. It felt like a residue of fire was left inside, and it was shorting out my healing. Had it been a normal blade my lung would have re-inflated almost immediately. That was not the case though. I laid there on the ground listening to my chest whistle for a good thirty seconds before my healing kicked-in. As I laid there doing my best impression of a trout, the screaming continued. Then the gun shots started.

  We’ve all heard people scream. But there is a difference between screaming in fright and screaming from primal terror. The screams from that camp were pure terror mixed with unimaginable agony. They reached across the distance and drove into me. I didn’t just hear them I felt them. I hunt werewolves but I am not what’s known as a Hunter. Hunters are good men and women who roll around the country saving the innocent. I’m a mercenary of sorts. I kill the big bad wolves to get paid. I don’t go looking for trouble or walk into some monster’s den just too emotionally jerk myself off with altruism. But I’m not a monster either, and only a cold-blooded monster could have listened to those screams and not have done something.

  As soon as my chest closed up I pushed myself up and sprinted toward the camp. I had no clue what in the bloody fuck was going on. No clue what sort of beast was in that ring of trees. Despite that I pushed forward. I pulled my big snub nosed Rugar Super Redhawk from the holster at my side and ditched the rifle. The clearing was too small for the rifle to be any good but the Redhawk was perfect. With the revolver out, I burst through the ring of trees and into a nightmare.


  My eyes were immediately drawn to an eight foot tall figure that loomed large over wrecked tents and torn limbs. The sight of the thing stopped me dead in my tracks. Lycans are scary but at least their bodies make sense. This thing did not. It’s legs and arms were almost skeletally thin. The hands were small but sprouted fingers three times longer than they should have been, and each finger ended in a sickle like claw. Its torso was small and reminded me of pictures of people liberated from concentration camps. Except that it’s belly was distended in a sick bulge that made it look like it was 16 months pregnant with twins. Its head sat on an overly long neck. Twin eyes of blazing violet burned within in a sharp angular face. Its mouth seemed impossibly big. Its jaw opened to reveal row after row of razor sharp fangs. The sight shocked me. The whole frightening package was wrapped in sickly grey skin with no hair.

  As bad as it looked the smell was far worse. Imagine a slaughter house on the equator with no AC and you’ll be about halfway there. I stood still for a moment shocked by what I saw and stunned by the over whelming sensory barrage. My stupor ended when a new smell hit me. It was subtle but crisp. It was the smell of hard steel mixed with the clean scent of a brilliant summer day. It was the smell of hope and it was coming from the man in the sheep skin jacket.

  Ole Stabby stood amongst the broken tents with five young men huddled behind him. I could see that one of the hikers was already dead. His arms and legs seemed scattered at random around the camp site. A long thick rope of his intestines was quickly disappearing down the throat of the horror. Stabby stood amongst the carnage like a boulder in storm. A pale silver light emanated from his body. The light calmed the fear inside me and gave my stunned mind a reboot. Looking and feeling that light made me think that everything would be ok.

  Stabby faced off ten feet from the beast. His right hand extended, the old 1911 glowing in the light of the moon as he fired it. The .45 caliber slugs slammed into the creature. Each one driving it back a little. The creature howled in pain but no wounds opened in its grey skin. As the seventh round left the chamber Stabby’s left hand came up. In it he held the knife he had kabobed me with. It too glowed with a silver light. In a flash he had the pistol holstered and was in motion toward the beast.

  There was no hurry in the man’s movements but he wasn’t slow either. He seemed to be a wave of righteous fury moving toward shore. The beast raised one of its huge clawed hands and brought it down at the old man. It struck hard on his shoulder but if he felt it he showed no sign. The claw bounced off him and then he was on the beast. His attacks were precise and prefect. He spun under another striking claw and brought the blade of his knife in hard at the beast. The edge sliced across the full length of the monsters distended belly. Silver power flashed in the night and the creature screamed in fury. It’s huge jaw opening far wider than should have been possible. I had felt that knife and I figured the creature was done for. I was wrong. Despite the pain the blade caused the slash left no more than a scratch across the beast’s belly. In response, the beast rained down blow after blow on the old man. Each blow bounced off but I could see the old man’s halo of silver grew just a bit dimmer with each strike.

  I was standing there with my mouth open watching two titan’s duke it out. But seeing all of this pulled me back to reality. The old man had spitted me and under normal circumstances that would have left me feeling less than eager to help him out. But the circumstances I was facing right then were far from normal. Stabby might have stuck a knife in me but to be fair I did try to sucker punch him in the back of the head so I probably had that one coming. Plus, Stabby wasn’t an eight-foot-tall monster with some kid’s intestines hanging out of his mouth. So, the long and short of it was that I needed to get my ass in gear and help before Stabby got fuckin murdered. We could clear up the whole stabbing and punching thing later. I did happen to have a miniature cannon in my hand so I brought it up and started putting .454 casull slugs into the monsters face.

  The Rugar Super RedHawk Alaskan is, quite frankly, a stupidly big gun. It was developed for one reason, to kill grizzly bears. It’s supposed to be the “oh shit” option if you are in the wilds of Alaska and a grizzly decides to turn you into an afternoon snack. In essence it is the smart alternative to bear mace. I bought mine because I wanted a gun that, if loaded with a silver round, would carve a hole out of the head of a charging lycan. I put six of those rounds into that terror’s face and all I managed to do was get it to look at me. I’d never had to fire that cannon more than once before. Seeing six slugs slam home and do nothing more than annoy the thing took the piss out of me real quick, figuratively speaking. And almost literally.

  Having the creature turn its blazing violet eyes on me did not fill me with warm-fuzzies. But with its attention on me, Stabby took the opportunity to drive that damn knife of his right into the creature’s grotesquely large stomach. Well, sort of. He did stab the bastard for all he was worth, but the knife barely went in past the tip. The damn thing’s skin was just too strong and it seemed that despite being a tough, and fearless, son-of-a-bitch, Stabby just didn’t have the horsepower to get the job done. Well I had some big ass horses under my hood and it had been weeks since I had done anything reckless and stupid.

  The creature took offense to Stabby sticking the tip of his knife into his belly. He swung his gaze back to the old man and started hammering blows down on him again. Well it was time to shit or get off the pot. I dropped my useless hand cannon and sprinted forward. The clearing was only thirty feet across and my wolf powder enhanced legs put me at top speed almost immediately. With the beast’s attention on Stabby I sprang at him as hard as I could. I tucked my legs up to my chest and hit him like a cannon ball. It wasn’t the most elegant attack but the situation seemed to be calling for violence and brute force over elegance.

  I struck him in the chest. Despite the creature’s obvious strength that much force hitting it so high above its overly long legs toppled it like an old tree. I rode the fall out with him. When he hit, my knees were square in his chest. “Knife.” I yelled over my shoulder as we struck the ground. After watching him fight I had figured that the old man knew his business, and he did not let me down! The knife flew over my right shoulder. I snatched it out of the air. Even though the hilt of the knife burned like hell, I wrapped both hands around the hilt and slammed it down with all my strength..

  It was like I was trying to drive it into a concrete wall. I got about half the blade into the creature’s chest before it let out a savage roar of pain which was quickly followed by a haymaker type blow from its clawed hand. I had seen the thing hit the old man and I had figured it was strong. Hell, it was eight friggin feet tall and a literal monster, so I had figured that it had to be devastatingly strong. I was right. And yet I still hadn’t quite grasped the full depth of the situation.

  I got hit by a truck once. Not an accident, by the way. The driver was a family member of a wolf whose heart I had acquired. The bastard had been helping cover up his sister’s carnivorous activities. Anyway, he felt a bit cross with me and ran me down with his Chevy Silverado. Getting hit by the beast felt a bit like that, only sharper.

  I had time to think as my body folded up like a taco and flew across the clearing. Which is a bad sign. If you’re in the air long enough after a punch to actually have a coherent thought other than “ow ow ow ow” then shit has gone spectacularly sideways on you. The thoughts I had as I flew weren’t anything real deep. I wasn’t composing a novel or working out some calculus proofs. I was thinking things like. “God my chest hurts, I think he broke my sternum.” “Am I spraying blood out of my chest?” Followed by “I bet I look like the world’s grossest rocket right now.” That was the last real though I had before I slammed into one of the small trees at the edge of the clearing. The poor tree never had a chance. It snapped in half and I continued my flight until a much larger tree graciously stopped my trajectory and broke my back.

  Not to toot my own horn but I’m pretty damn tough. The wolf
heart pumps me up almost to the level of a full werewolf. I can heal almost any wound in a very short amount of time. Even debilitating ones. Things do get a bit wonky though when you pile several mortal wounds on top of each other. My body burns through the magic much faster. And if it runs out before the fatal damage is healed then I’m pretty much ultra fucked.

  Laying at the base of that tree I realized that I might be in an ultra fucked situation. I was pretty sure that a good deal of my spine was basically gravel. I could not feel the lower half of my body and my arms weren’t working all that great. My head was all floppy on my neck and my chin had come to rest on my chest in a way that gave me a good look at the situation there. The situation was that I was staring at my beating heart. My slowly and weakly beating heart. The son of a bitch hadn’t broken my sternum he had cut it, and a good portion of my ribs, right out. His stupid sickle claws must have gotten stuck in my chest and ripped everything open as I flew away. That did explain why I had been geysering blood though.

  Another issue was that I had somehow kept hold of the knife as I flew. On the one hand that was pretty impressive. On the other it sucked because the damn thing was burning the shit out of my hand and while I could feel it, I couldn’t do much about it because my hand was not taking calls right then.

  I was in a hell of a pickle. My body was totally trashed. It was healing but such massive damage took some time to heal. And then there was the fact that I could feel the magic in my blood fading. I had more wolf heart in my pocket but as I said my arms weren’t working. I was starting to really come to terms with the fact that I was going to die, and by coming to terms I mean that I was mentally losing my shit, when I heard boots crunching on the pine needles to my left.