“The monster,” Jonathan whispered.
His mother had told him about the shapeshifter when he was young. She warned him never to stray too far from house alone. More than once as a boy, when he played in the woods, he felt hungry eyes on his back and heard fierce, evil cackles ring through the trees. Fearful that his mother told the truth, he never left her sight for long.
“He is real,” Jonathan said, convinced of the beast's existence. He leaned against the kitchen counter, an ivory-handled revolver in his grasp.
On the driveway, Alexandra recognized the bloody cry of the angry mongrel and shuddered to recall his hot, stinking breath on her neck as his jaws bit down upon her skin.
He is what hell smells like
, she thought, clenching her long, auburn curls in her fists.
He is what hell tastes like: Flea-bitten skin. Musty, matted fur. Rotting bits of flesh stuck between his jagged, yellow fangs.
She knew that the beast was a monster, an abomination. She spit at the ground, her innocence fading.
Alexandra believed in evil. “I'm going to kill him,” she announced, just as a shriek of pain rang out from Peyton Manor.
“Wait!” Callahan interrupted, grasping her arm and clasping her shirttail as she lunged forward toward the house.
The hinges of the front door squeaked. A figure hidden in the shadow emerged hesitantly from the doorway. He limped tenderly toward the porch steps.
Alexandra strained to recognize the man in the moonlight.
He did not see her or Callahan standing together, motionless on the driveway, failing to discern his motive or identity.
Alexandra studied the man as he descended the porch steps: Shaggy hair. Scruffy beard.
With his feet planted upon the bottom step, he turned back toward the house and cupped his hand over his mouth. “Come and get me,” he shouted into the night and untucked a revolver from his pants pocket.
“Daddy!” she gasped, untangling from Callahan's grasp. “Daddy!” she sang, choking back her fear that the figure might only be a cruel apparition. Her voice rang out above the firing of the pistol as Jonathan swiveled on his heels.
“Alexandra?” he shouted, straining to see the face of the girl bearing down upon him.
On the porch, Cyrus felt the impact as a bullet lodged itself in the fatty flesh of his gut. His breath grew shallow. Blood pooled beneath him on the wooden planks. Cyrus still had hopes of getting them both. He let the girl run closer to the man, but not too close.
In an instant, he launched his body toward the front porch steps. The pads of his paws slapped at the porch planks and his claws dug furrows into the wood. His tail spun like a pinwheel, as if it could propel him into the sky. Snarling, he bore down upon the top step and peeled his black lips from his clenched teeth.
Alexandra's knees buckled beneath her so that she fell forward on the packed gravel of the driveway. Her palms flew up in front of her nose, but this maneuver did nothing to weaken the impact of her chest slamming against the dirt and rock.
“No!” Jonathan screamed as Cyrus leaped at him.
Alexandra heard her father's voice. As she glanced up at the porch steps, she scratched her chin on a ragged strip of oak bark lying beneath her face. She could see that the wolf was holding her father's neck in an unyielding clasp of fury.
“Go!” Jonathan gurgled as he flailed upon the ground, his arms and legs kicking and clawing futilely at the manic beast. He knew the revolver was close by, but he silently begged his daughter to stay away. His fingernails clawed at the beast's frothing muzzle.
Still on her belly, Alexandra screamed, her fists pounding the earth.
A hand settled calmly upon her shoulder. “My turn,” Callahan whispered in her ear. Leaping across the driveway, Callahan forgot the bruise on his ankle even as his foot swelled inside his shoe. Swooping down upon the revolver, he snatched the gun and cocked the hammer.
Cyrus loosened his grip on Jonathan's neck and growled at the intruder.
Callahan grinned at the beast. He reached inside his tuxedo jacket for a leather-bound book. “Fetch,” he said, flinging the journal into the air.
Whimpering, Cyrus released his prey as the book climbed toward the moon, the pages of the journal fluttering in the breeze. “Stupid dog,” Callahan said and fired the pistol.
Cyrus shrieked as his gut took another bullet. Collapsing upon the journal, he slumped; his heart slowed and relinquished the will to fight.
Approaching the dying beast, Callahan kicked a rib and a gust of breath escaped the wolf's lungs. “He's not for long,”
Callahan pronounced, aiming the barrel of the pistol at the head of the moaning beast before a final shot blasted from the chamber.
Alexandra scrambled to her feet when Cyrus stopped breathing.
“Daddy!” she cried and ran to her father.
He moaned, his back writhing upon the blood-dampened driveway.
“Hi, kiddo,” he stuttered and stroked her wet cheek.
Bending over his chest, Alexandra ran her fingertips tenderly across his forehead.
Around her neck, her medallion dangled loosely over her collarbone.
“Kraven,” Jonathan whispered, with eyes upon the present to his daughter.
Nodding her head, Alexandra glanced to Callahan as he removed his jacket to tuck under Jonathan's head.
From behind Peyton Manor, a cackle rolled over them, riding in from the beach upon a gentle sea breeze.
“Go,” Callahan told her.
“No,” Alexandra protested.
“End this,” Callahan said. “I will stay with him.”
Stumbling back from her father, Alexandra clasped her necklace in her hands and tossed her head back to the sky, hoping for Kraven's help. She fled toward the shore.
Taylor held her breath. In her lap, her nervous fingers picked off glittery flecks of pink polish from her nails. “I don't know what the hell I was thinking,” Taylor said to herself, glancing curiously out the passenger window of the Mustang. At the wide foot of a moss-draped oak tree, Benjamin and Jack answered the insistent call of nature.
“Hideous,” Taylor sighed, studying her nails, as she squirmed in her seat.
“Much better, right boy?” Benjamin asked Jack and patted him firmly on the white splotch in the middle of his brown back.
The creak of a door hinge stirred a panicked growl from the dog's throat. Cocking his head to the side, Jack yelped and slapped his tail against the jutting tree roots that snarled the earth beneath the tree.
“Ben,” Taylor called calmly.
Standing motionless with his fingers to his lips, Benjamin whispered to the dog, “Shh.”
“Ben,” Taylor cried more desperately as Benjamin crept toward the Mustang. His path was hidden from the moonlight. He could barely see it in the deep shadows cast on the driveway by the towering tree limbs.
“Hey,” he said, tapping the hood just before Taylor whacked the tip of a crutch into his stomach.
A gurgle struggled from his mouth as he dropped to the gravel.
“Sorry,” Taylor hissed sarcastically and climbed from the car. “You scared me.”
Clutching his stomach, Benjamin leaned on the hood.
“Are you sure you dialed the right number?” Taylor asked and poked her crutch at his front pocket.
“Yes,” Benjamin said, retreating from the reach of the disgruntled blonde. “9-1-1,” he said, reassuring her.
“We don't have time to wait,” Taylor said, shuffling on her crutches over the gravel toward the truck blocking the iron gate into Peyton Manor. “Get in,” she called behind her as she popped open the truck's passenger door. She struggled up a stair step and into a ripped vinyl seat that was patched precariously with silver duct tape. She pulled her seatbelt tight. Taylor pursed her lips and sent forth a high-pitched whistle.
Pricking his ears, Jack bounded toward the truck.
“She doesn't take no for an answer,” Benjamin muttered to Jack as he lifted the bulldog into her lap.
“Look,” she directed him. “The keys are in the ignition.” She cradled Jack in her arms.
Benjamin nodded. “Hold on,” he said, climbing into the cabin of the truck and cranking the engine. His foot revved the accelerator. Flipping on the headlights and adjusting his seatbelt, he studied the spindly pine tree trunk resting vertically across the top of the bent iron gate.
“Do it,” Taylor coached, squeezing his hand as he gripped the steering wheel.
Slamming his foot against the gas pedal, Benjamin closed his eyes and braced for impact. With her blue eyes wide open, Taylor cheered as the truck rammed the gate.
Shaken loose by the truck, the pine trunk collapsed against the roof of the cargo hull and landed with a thud behind the back bumper. The front tires trampled over the damaged gate. Barreling across the gravel, the truck swerved sideways across the driveway before Benjamin could steady the wheels.
“I knew you could do it!” Taylor squealed confidently.
Benjamin wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Shifting gears, he tapped the accelerator and coasted cautiously down the moonlit path.
Taylor sat perched on the edge of the passenger seat as his navigator. Wrapping her arms around Jack, she focused her anxious gaze on the windshield. “We're close,” she told Benjamin before she spotted the front porch of Peyton Manor in the headlights.
“Who is that?” Benjamin asked as he leaned over the steering wheel, his right foot tapping the brake.
There was a squeal of grinding metal from the brakes. The screech pierced the silence that shrouded the figures ahead. They were hovering on the brick-paved roundabout in front of the house. In the study window overlooking the porch, drawn curtains fluttered.
“Jonathan!” said June, her voice quivering as she peeked at the man lying on her driveway, his pale face illuminated by the truck headlights.
“Callahan!” his students said in unison from the cab of the truck. They could see the body of the wolf, utterly still in death, on his back upon the driveway, the beast's black tongue lolling across his gritted fangs.
Callahan peered at the bite marks that the beast had left on Jonathan's throat. Callahan knew that it was a severe wound. A shallow pool of trickling blood gathered beneath his neck and soaked the jacket Callahan had tucked under his head.
“Alex,” Jonathan sputtered.
“Get out of my way,” June hissed at Brad, who was blocking the study doorway.
Sleeping as still as a corpse, Ian snored in his leather chair, oblivious to the threats June threw at Brad.
“I'm coming with you,” Brad said, unlocking the study door even as she beat her weak fists upon his shoulders.
What did she give him?
Brad asked himself silently, glancing at Ian and deciding he should let June have her way.
In the driveway, Benjamin grabbed Taylor from her seat. Jack jumped to the ground from her lap. “My crutches,” she said, yanking them from the floorboard of the truck.
Hobbling in her cast, she could not stop the dog from bolting at the man lying on the bricks. Jack whimpered, his tongue lapping at the man's face.
Callahan recognized a smile crack the grimace of pain etched into Jonathan's solemn face.
“Come closer,” he said, spying Taylor and Benjamin shuffling slowly toward him.
“My baby!” a trembling voice shouted from the porch. June bit her lips against the ache in her eighty-year-old knees as she shuffled quickly down the steps. Brad was close on her heels.
As Brad's eyes adjusted to the crisp illumination of the headlights, Brad recognized the pretty blonde standing in the driveway. “Taylor?” he asked in confusion.
Callahan felt the tense crowd gathering at his back. “Hold on,” he whispered to Jonathan, his hands applying pressure on the ripped veins in Jonathan's neck.
Kraven drifted farther and faster down through the abyss. His spirit denied his weary body the will to fight, to swim, and to live. He saw Iselin behind his closed eyes. Her auburn hair flowed around her face like gossamer ribbons, and her green eyes twinkled above her blushing, freckled cheeks.
She reached for his face. “Kraven,” she spoke his name, her lips parting gently to utter the sound. As sweet as drops of nectar from a honeysuckle petal, her voice soothed his soul.
“Forever,” she said, just before his back smacked against the ocean floor. The rattle of his bones upon the sandy bottom of the sea shook consciousness back into his body. Drifting through the currents, he realized that his wings were no more than a collapsed heap of flesh, swaddling his arms and chest. Kraven felt no pain.
He rested on the sandy bottom and considered that if he died, he might see her again. His eyes shut against the wall of water pressing down upon him,
Then let me die, finally
, he wished.
Yet his chest heaved for air. A battle between body and spirit ignited beneath his skin and bone. At his back, his massive wings quivered and retracted, the only evidence of their existence two pulsing mounds of flesh between his shoulder blades.
“Swallow me,” he begged the ocean, “just as you did my Iselin.”
A sharp slap to the jaw broke his trance. Kraven blinked open his eyes. In the murky depths, he struggled to lift his back from the ocean floor and he strained through the cloudy black current to recognize who had struck him.
Kraven had not seen the face of the man standing before him in sixty years: Joseph Peyton. With his glossy boots planted firm in the sand and his clenched fists resting against the curve of his hips, Joseph Peyton loomed above Kraven. “Get up,” the apparition commanded.
With melancholy soaking his glistening skin, Kraven rose to his feet and remembered. The ghost wore the green army fatigues he had worn the first time Kraven had confronted him. At the time, they were at the mouth of a cave in a forest across the vast sea.