SavageLust (11 page)

“Then why come around here?” Harley asked. “Doesn’t make
much sense.”

“Maybe looking for smaller prey. Who knows? But I’ll tell
you, the damn thing gives me the creeps. And it stinks to high heaven too.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Turpentine, right?”

Dan nodded. “Weird, huh? Maybe we should check contractors
working around here. See if one of them brought a dog to work with them. I’ll
get Tina to look it up on the computer and see what she can find.”

“Well, whoever it belongs to, I sure as hell wish they’d
come fetch it.”

“You talking about the dog?” Russ had let himself in through
the backdoor and he also headed for the coffeepot. “I think it’s feral and been
out killing things.”

“You saw the blood on its jowls?” Harley asked.

Russ nodded. “Yeah. Not only that, riding across the south
pasture, I found a couple carcasses of smaller animals. Squirrel. Maybe fox. It’s
hunting for food.”

“If that’s the case, maybe our construction theory is all
wrong. If someone owned it, he or she would be feeding it, right?” Dan asked.

“I’m not one for killing animals just for the hell of it,”
Russ said, “but I’m about ready to shoot the fucking thing if I see it again.
Maybe I should have done it yesterday when it was scaring the piss out of the cattle,
but it ran off into the trees and out to the meadow beyond.”

“What do you suppose it wants here?” Dan asked.

Russ shrugged. “Don’t know. But I think if I’d been on foot
instead of on my horse, it might have attacked
me
.”

“Same here,” Harley put in. “I was saddling Rush Job and it
didn’t seem to want anything to do with the horse.”

“And that damn smell,” Russ added. “Next time I think I’ll
turn the hose on it.”

Dan laughed. “Might be a way to get rid of it.”

“Well, better make sure it’s not killing anything around
here,” Harley pointed out. “If it is, I’ll shoot the fucking thing myself.”

* * * * *

The devil beast curled into itself in a bower of dense
foliage. The frightening creatures thundering across the ground all around it
terrified the beast. There were so many of them. Where did they all come from,
these things that loomed over it like monsters? And why did the signals
programmed into its brain keep sending it to this place?

Lying in the darkness of the thick vegetation, it tried to
ignore the vibrations rumbling up through the ground and shaking its body. It
wanted food. No, it wanted
blood
. The signals pulsing in its brain were
stimulating its hunger center but other signals were tamping it down. The mixed
stimulation made its head and body hurt.

This morning it had caught and trapped small creatures
scampering through the underbrush, leaping on each one with ferocity, snapping
their necks with sharp teeth before feasting on the carcasses. So for now, at
least, the extreme gnawing hunger, the thirst for blood, was temporarily eased.
But soon it would be back.

The vibrations disturbing the ground increased in their
intensity and the beast burrowed even deeper into its hiding place, claws
clapped over its ears. It wanted to leave this place, to get far away. Search
for prey where there wasn’t such an ever-present threat. But every time it
tried to leave the area, something in its head sent a sharp pain through its
entire body.

Sleep. If it could just sleep. Then it would be time to hunt
again.

* * * * *

The Texas Rangers, headquartered in Austin, Texas, were
acknowledged as the oldest state law enforcement in the United States,
unmatched by any other unit in the country. In their long existence, they had
taken part in many of the most important events in Texas history, and were
involved in some of the best-known criminal cases in the days of the Old West.
Their duties consisted of “conducting criminal and special investigations,
apprehending wanted felons, suppressing major disturbances; the protection of
life and property, and rendering assistance to local law enforcement in
suppressing crime and violence,” according to the Texas Department of Public
Safety website.

But none of them had ever dealt with a situation like the
eviscerated, bloodless body of Reed Fortune, the disappearance of his fiancée
and the total absence of any clues whatsoever. Both the body and every scrap of
possible evidence they could find had been brought to Ranger headquarters in
Austin, to its state-of-the-art forensics lab.

Brad DeWitt, chief of the Texas Rangers, hung up his phone
and leaned back in his desk chair. The day he was accepted into the Rangers was
the most memorable one of his life, outside of his wedding day. The walls of
his office were lined with framed pictures and certificates that told a visual
story of his years with the department, the major cases they’d dealt with. Some
had taken longer than others to bring to a successful conclusion but in the
end, all of them had been closed.

At fifty-five, he thought he’d seen everything that could
come down the pike but this latest case was beyond weird. He had a gnawing
feeling it was going to haunt all of them for a long time. Reaching into his
desk drawer, he found an antacid tablet and popped it into his mouth. His consumption
of them had risen exponentially with the increase in calls from the media,
demanding answers. Just his damn luck that some asshole idiot had stumbled onto
the scene of Reed Fortune’s body and snapped some pictures, instead of
reporting it to park rangers.

The park employees had acted quickly, cordoning off the
scene after a traumatized couple had reported the body. They called for the
Texas Rangers immediately. But whoever the jackass was who’d taken the pictures
had sold them to a tabloid and there was now an all-out media assault.

He was getting pressure from everywhere, from the governor
on down.

On the one hand, the gruesome details of the case, along
with the still-missing fiancée, fed the salacious hunger of the masses. On the
other, the media and businesses were screaming about tourism possibly taking a
big hit until there was a resolution and people felt safe again.

As if he didn’t have enough to handle with the strange
nature of the killing itself.

He pulled up a file on his computer and opened it to study
the pictures of the body. The crime scene unit had taken their shots and the
medical examiner had added several more. Brad had seen a lot of bodies in his
time, people killed by both humans and animals, but these were probably the
most gruesome photos he’d ever looked at. Reed Fortune had been completely
eviscerated, ripped open with one slash from his throat to his pubic bone,
every internal organ pulled out and on the ground beside him. And every bit of
blood had been drained from the body.

Brad had seen more than his share of bodies attacked by
coyotes, bear, bobcats, wild hogs and other feral animals. But this! This wasn’t
like anything he’d ever witnessed. He’d made the autopsy a top priority and had
nearly everyone in forensics analyzing any tissue or other debris left by the
killer. Any trace of any kind at all.

They’d all come up with nothing.

He couldn’t stall on this much longer. The media would only
wait so long before going over his head. The governor was all over him about
the effect on tourism. And he owed Fortune’s sister answers. Then, of course,
there was the missing woman, Fortune’s fiancée. Her family and their attorney
were calling almost every hour. Searchers had been all over every inch of the
park, up and down the trail ten times, without finding even a smidgen of a
trace. She just seemed to have vanished into thin air.

The latest message from her family said they were tired of
getting nowhere with “the famous Texas Rangers” and were hiring their own
experts to search for her.

Why the fuck did this have to happen in a popular state
park, anyway? And here in Texas?

A knock sounded on the frame of his open office door and he
looked up to see Ranger Garth Myers standing there with a message slip in his
hand.

“Stella said you were on the phone when this came in. She
saw me headed this way and asked me to deliver it.”

“The girl’s family again?” Brad asked.

Myers shook his head. “Another message about that guy Craig
Stafford.
This
one from the governor’s office.”

Brad reached out for the slip of paper. “As if things aren’t
bad enough already. The guy doesn’t give up, does he?”

“Who is he, anyway?”

“A guy with enough money to buy the state of Texas. Maybe
even the entire country. And who apparently likes to throw his weight around.”
He swallowed a sigh as he read the message from the governor’s executive aide.

“What does he want with us?” Garth didn’t even try to hide
the curiosity in his voice.

“Bullshit.” Brad wondered if he should pop another antacid.
“He’s got some kind of nonsense about chasing the Chupacabra and some team he
has working on it. Says they want to help us with this.” He snorted and tossed
the message on his desk. “I’ll get a fresh cup of coffee and call the capital
building. Jesus, as if we didn’t have enough shit going on.”

“Before you get indigestion, why not Google the guy and see
if he’s legit?”

“Legit? With talk of the Chupacabra?” Brad snorted.
“Everyone knows it’s just a legend someone made up.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. And maybe they made it up because there’s
something out there close to it.”

Brad stared at him. “And here I thought you were an
intelligent man.”

“Just sayin’. You know? Give me an hour to see what I find.
If it’s a dead end, then we haven’t lost anything but sixty minutes of my
time.”

“Suit yourself.” He looked at his watch. “It’s still early
enough that it won’t cut much into your workday. I’m going back over to the
lab. Have Stella find me when you get through Googling.”

“Okay. I’m on it.”

“Wait. Did you want to see me about something?”

“Just to ask if you wanted to kick this around between the
two of us. I know you’ve got a whole team on it but maybe we can find something
we’ve overlooked. I did a complete search again on the park and the wild
animals there.”

“Maybe,” Brad said. “But I’d better make this call first.”

Just as he reached for the phone on his desk, it rang,
startling him.

Brad picked up the handset. “Yeah?”

“I see how charming you are this morning,” said Dr. Leo
Moran, the medical examiner. “This case is obviously giving you fits. And I’m
probably not going to improve your disposition.”

Brad frowned. “Now what? I thought you’d finished the
autopsy on the body?”

“I did. Sort of. But I wasn’t happy with a lot of the lab
tests that came back.”

The chief ground his teeth. “What could possibly be in the
lab tests that would affect this case? The guy was ripped apart by some wild
animal.”

“Yeah, well, okay.” Moran paused. “But there’s something
really odd here.”

“Odd?” Brad reached in his drawer for another antacid
tablet. “Just what I need. Odd. In what way?”

“There are strands of something in his DNA that I can’t
quite identify. I mean, I can identify them—or rather, Justine did—but I can’t
figure out how they got there.”

“Enough lead-in. Spit it out already.”

“Chief, you aren’t going to believe this. The dead guy had
DNA from a wolf.”

Brad DeWitt sat straight up in his chair. “Are you fucking
kidding me? A wolf? That has to be wrong. Run the damn tests again.”

“We’ve run them four times already,” the medical examiner
protested. “I don’t know what to say but I think I’m a little out of my element
here. We might need to call in someone else but I don’t know who.”

Brad picked up the message slip on his desk. “There’s
someone pulling a lot of strings to get involved in this. If he’s so well
informed, maybe he has an answer for you. Meanwhile, lock down every bit of
this information. Tell Justine not to say a word.”

“Believe me, she won’t. She’s as freaked as I am.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

With a bad feeling circling in his stomach, Brad punched a
button for an outside line and very reluctantly dialed the number he had for
Craig Stafford.

* * * * *

Garth Myers hadn’t been completely up front with his
commanding officer. Like many other Texas residents, he’d heard about the
legendary Chupacabra, but
he
hadn’t dismissed it completely out of hand.
Not the way his boss did. Garth’s maternal grandmother was Comanche and
believed in a lot of the legends and spiritual tales. When Reed Fortune’s body
was found, she was the first one Garth called.

“El Chupacabra,” she told him in an ominous voice. “But
killing people now? Something is very, very bad.”

He didn’t need his
kaku
to tell him that. The minute
he’d taken a look at the body of Reed Fortune, ice had crept over his spine and
a chill had encompassed his body. People whispered about the “goatsucker”, the
vampire beast that sucked blood from its victims. Who destroyed the bodies.

Those who claimed to have seen it often gave conflicting
descriptions but there were a few things they all agreed on. The largest living
thing it ever killed was a goat and it looked like an alien offspring. The
general description had it standing anywhere from three to five feet, with
strong, muscular hind legs and no forelegs, only short arms that ended in huge
claw-like appendages. The head resembled a coyote but larger, with a wide mouth
and sharp teeth punctuated by two wicked-looking fangs. Some said the eyes were
blood red. Others, that they were blacker than midnight.

Several artists had created renderings based on the
descriptions. The differences really were minimal. No matter how you looked at
it, the beast was enough to terrify anyone. It certainly scared the shit out of
Garth.

When he had culled all he could from the websites he pulled
up, saving key ones in a bookmarked folder on his computer, he began his search
on the mysterious Craig Stafford, who apparently had the ear of presidents and
kings. And governors. A pioneer in the field of electronics, he had parlayed
one small manufacturing company into what was now a worldwide conglomerate.
There was certainly a lot of information to be found, not unusual for a man of
his wealth and position.