Hounacier (Valducan Book 2) (20 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Malcolm woke, his cheek resting against cool, red bricks. Scrunching his eyes, he tried to grasp the tattered remnants of the dream he'd had, buying pigs from an ugly man with an enormous moustache. It was important somehow. But then it was gone.

Black iron legs of patio furniture stood just a few feet before him. Shards of broken glass lay scattered about, edges glinting in the sunlight. Cars rumbled nearby. Birds twittered somewhere behind him, and in the distance, bells tolled. A faint breeze slid across his naked skin, stirring a wind chime.

Where the hell am I?
He sat up, and his cheek peeled off the worn paving. His stomach lurched at the movement, so full it hurt. Malcolm saw the partial face-print of drying blood on the brick, and the icy horror took hold. Feeling it come, Malcolm rolled onto his knees as his stomach heaved. Blood, strings of chewed flesh, and grayish chunks sprayed out across the paving.

Panting, Malcolm wiped his mouth and looked around. He was inside a small courtyard with potted flowers and moss-coated walls. A balconied, two-story house loomed above him, making up one and a half sides to the yard. Its large glass doors stood a few feet behind him, cream-colored curtains blocking the view inside. Above a stone wall, crowned with broken, up-thrust colored glass, stood a neighboring house. A gunmetal gray BMW sat on the far side, beneath a copper-roofed carport, and facing a green sliding car door. He was in the French Quarter, but where?

There were no exits but the curtained doors and carport. The glass-topped walls posed no difficulty for a werewolf, but for him, naked, was a different matter.
Now you're just fucking with me, asshole.
But the tall, defensive glass appeared too complete to account for all the shards scattered about. None of that was colored or from curved bottles. He looked up. Mint green curtains hung out from a broken, second-floor window, framed in jagged glass. The demon had been inside that house.

Malcolm stood, careful not to step in the bloody mess now running in little streams between the paving bricks. Inside was dark. Only a faint square of light from a distant window was visible through the curtains, their folds patterned in a colorless floral design. He checked the knob. Locked.

Shielding the sides of his eyes, he pressed his face against the glass, seeing no more than the shapes of furniture. Malcolm glanced up at the neighboring house that overlooked the small yard. He didn't see anyone. He hurried over to a window. It was also locked.
You're really just fucking with me.
He wondered how the werewolf had removed the ring without his knowledge. Why hadn't he noticed? He remembered the voice right before he lost consciousness.

"
Not yet. You're mine,
" it had said.

A shiver ran though him. They'd always assumed demons couldn't control hosts until they manifested. Until then, they could only watch through their eyes. He remembered Shane on the drive. The demon talked through him. They'd been terribly wrong. Was it in control now?

No. It was dark. The sun had gone down when it took me. It was night when it spoke though Shane.
Malcolm checked the sky. Still morning. They sun hadn't yet crested the top of the courtyard wall. If he moved, he could get to Alpuente's before they opened.

Brown spots speckled the curtains. Malcolm peered through a slender gap between them and saw a crumpled form lying face-down on a blood-smeared kitchen floor.
Oh God.

He'd seen werewolf victims before, their throats torn and bodies ripped open, allowing access to the tender insides. But…but
he
had done this. He had killed them.

It
, he corrected.
It killed them.

The thought didn't help. How many more victims were inside? Was anyone alive? How many more would die by him before he grew the balls to do what he had to do? He had to die.
No. First, I have to tell the Order.

Anger mounting, Malcolm headed back to the curtained French doors. He picked up a small clay bunny standing in a planter, its huge, upturned eyes shyly hopeful. With a hard throw, he smashed the figure through the plate window. It caught in the cream curtain and slid to the floor with a heavy thud.

Careful not to step on broken glass, Malcolm pushed the curtain aside and stepped through. The sharp, unmistakable stink of entrails hit him, almost pushing Malcolm back. Arcs of drying blood splattered the wall and a blue ultrasuede chair. Beside it, the shredded corpse of a man, his featured lost to claw marks and hidden beneath red-caked hair, lay on the ground. Loops of mangled intestine spilled across the floor in dark puddles. Malcolm could see up into the man's chest cavity. Werewolves almost always ate the heart.

Bloody footprints, paw-like but too long for any natural animal, stained the rug and shiny, pale tiles. Malcolm's eyes followed their path from the chair to the adjoining kitchen. It had leaped onto the back of a sofa, its claws tearing the fabric. One set of tracks led to the back door, their short stride and full print suggesting a simple walk. He turned, seeing bloody prints on the lock.

The werewolf had locked the door then escaped out the upper floor into the courtyard intentionally, leaving him to scale glass naked or to find this house of horrors. It
was
fucking with him.

Stomach churning at the scene laid out just for him, Malcolm walked into the kitchen. A woman, her right arm torn free, lay sprawled on the glossy tile; her blood had run down the grout, forming a grid-work away from the carnage. A steel butcher's knife lay among the gore and scattered shards of a broken plate. The woman's gnawed and fleshless arm lay discarded in the adjoining hall, the carpet matted in wet blood. He pictured the monster sitting there on its haunches chewing the limb like a dog with scraps. Malcolm's stomach lurched, and he dashed to the sink, nearly slipping in the sticky blood, and vomited what little remained in his stomach.

He wiped his mouth and turned on the faucet, gargling and rinsing it out before drinking. Pink chunks swirled in the bottom of the stainless sink. Malcolm slapped a wall switch before him, and the disposal chewed and ground the bits away.

Eyes teary with sick and hatred, he turned his head, seeing the faces of the family he'd eaten smiling out from a digital picture frame. A young couple, standing against a metal rail, the sun setting behind them on an ocean horizon. The picture changed. Now, they were posing with another couple around a table, late thirties it appeared, the men's features so similar it suggested relation. It changed again. A young boy grinning up from a pile of torn wrapping paper, a shiny cardboard box clutched to his chest.

A cold dread seeped into his empty stomach, filling it like lead. The picture dissolved into a photograph of an older couple dressed in Sunday best. Malcolm turned to the refrigerator near him, its black surface buried beneath crayon drawings on colored paper.

Not another child.

The digital picture slid aside to show a new photograph of the now dead mother and father posing with a sandy-haired boy, maybe five, and fat-cheeked baby in the mother's arms.

Malcolm gripped the counter behind him, his knees nearly buckling under the weight inside him. He clenched his eyes. The picture's image still burned in his mind. Their smiles, their joy, gone.

He drew a breath, counted to five, then released it. He needed to know. Malcolm followed the paw prints out into the hall, past the stripped arm, and up the stairs to the second floor. "Brian," read a plastic street sign on one of the doors. Clothes and brightly colored toys littered the floor. Malcolm winced as he stepped on a gray Lego.

The nursery was empty as well.

Maybe they weren't here. Maybe they were off at grandma and grandpa's
, he hoped, remembering the old couple in the photograph.

His tenuous hopes died as he entered the parents' room. The cracked closet door hung open, clothes and plastic hangers strewn about, soaking the blood from the red-stained carpet. They were inside. Most of them. The boy, Brian, wore shredded cartoon-print pajamas, his body nearly torn in half, mouth open, his face somehow almost completely clean save a pair of thick, dried drops beneath his left eye. The infant, whom he had hidden in the closet with as a monster ate their parents, was only pieces. A tiny, pale leg, broken off at the thigh, was the only part not gnawed and shredded.

Malcolm's head swam. Staggering, he caught himself against the bed and closed his eyes. He was a monster. He needed to be stopped. The fallen butcher's knife in the kitchen came to mind. One quick motion, and he could finish what the terrified mother had tried.

But the demon wouldn't die. Only Malcolm and the knowledge of what had happened to Hounacier. Malcolm wiped his mouth and nodded. He knew what he had to do.

Careful not to be seen, he peeked out the window. He scanned the street, noticing a familiar white building on the corner. Ursulines. He was on Ursulines. Jim's shop was a dozen blocks from here. Malcolm glanced at the bedside clock. 7:21. Alpuente's opened at 8:00. He could make it before they did.

Avoiding the closet, Malcolm found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt in the laundry. He'd never worn Armani before. He knew they were the last pair of pants he'd ever wear, the jeans of a dead man. Unable to pull on the husband's tiny shoes, Malcolm settled on a pair of rubber flip-flops tucked under the bed. Scouring drawers and the wife's jewelry box yielded a slender silver ring set with a purple stone and a silver cross fashioned like a trio of fused nails.

In the office, Malcolm tore a thick page from a notepad and wrote,

Jim,

I am possessed with a werewolf. I have killed and will kill again unless you do exactly what I say.

Malcolm quickly jotted his instructions, including how to contact the Order. That complete, he folded the paper once and secured it to his shirt with a safety pin.

He eyed the now discarded pen. His fingerprints were on it. His prints were all over the house now. Not that it mattered. He'd be dead long before the police could catch him. No telling how many cops Atabei owned. Once word about the killings got out, she'd know it was him. She could tell them what to look for. She could point them to Alpuente's.

Standard procedure was to burn a kill site. Destroy any evidence and save the family the terrible truth as to how their loved ones had died. But the French Quarter was too populated. Too much risk of other houses catching and even more innocent deaths.

Malcolm wiped the pen with his shirt as well as the office door handle. He swabbed other obvious spots he'd touched as he made his way downstairs, and then wiped his bloody footprints off the kitchen floor. DNA tests would take too long to identify anything, if there was anything recoverable from the putrid mess he'd vomited outside. He'd just let the police draw their own conclusions from the paw prints.

Malcolm slipped on a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses he'd found. He checked the clock. 7:42.
Only one thing left.

The dainty ring could only fit onto his left little finger. Malcolm slipped it on then wrenched the joint back. It popped. Clenching his teeth, Malcolm held back a scream. Cheeks puffing with each breath, Malcolm clutched the spiked cross in his other hand. He closed his fist, pressing the point against his flesh and wrapped the black, cotton necklace around it. Not allowing time to think about it, he slammed his hand into his thigh, driving the nail into his palm. Malcolm yanked the necklace end with his teeth, cinching his fist closed. The werewolf couldn't fully form if silver penetrated him. Now, he just needed to get to Jim's.

Dizzy with pain, he opened the door and left, keeping his head low. The morning streets were mostly clear, and Malcolm hurried down the road.
Eighteen minutes.
Rounding the corner, he broke into a jog, the molded heel of the small flip-flops digging into his feet with each step.

Blood oozed between his clenched fingers. Pain shot through his hand with each movement, but Malcolm squeezed harder. He wove though tourists and pedestrians on their way to work.

The left flip-flop came free as Malcolm hurried across a street. He was halfway to the shop now. He kicked the other sandal off and ran.

"Hey, Doc!" someone yelled.

Malcolm looked back to see Julian, the bald street hustler, hand raised in greeting.
Shit.
He kept running.
Four more blocks.

A sudden terror swirled in the back of his mind. Jim couldn't help him. Going back would only endanger them.

No. That was wrong. He had to get to Jim's.

The fear grew, his legs faltered, and he stumbled. The demon was fighting.

Fuck you.
Malcolm pushed himself harder. He had to get to the shop. Concrete and ill-fitted paving stones tore at his soles. He turned a corner, nearly colliding with a woman. "Sorry." He ran past wrought-iron pillars and shop owners sweeping the night's partying from their curbs.
One more block.

The silver ring bit into his swelling, broken finger. It throbbed with each pounding heartbeat. Malcolm reached the shop. Lights already burned in the cases behind the windows. He pulled the door with his unbroken fingers.

Locked.

Inside, Mister Alpuente shuffled behind the counter, setting out coin-laden trays.