Big Bad Wolf: Cougarville Book 4 Read online

  achieve his desired results.

  Mr. X wondered what his colleagues back at the company

  would think if they knew what he was up to and laughed.

  Black magic…moonlight sacrifices…spilling innocent blood…

  He’d always been considered something of an outlier, but his

  wealth meant he was tolerated and kept on as a silent partner, even when his practices were a little far-fetched.

  Well, this was a lot far-fetched, not that the aforementioned colleagues knew about it, but if it worked it

  would be perfect. He would be able to change without the help of the pelt and not worry about getting stuck in his animal form if there was no suitable prey around after he shifted.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and made certain the syringe along with the other testing equipment was safely stored. In the backpack he was wearing was a single item—a

  long, spotted, scru y pelt with the head of the animal it had been taken from still attached. A sour smell came from the fur but Mr. X barely noticed it anymore. It was so much a part of him—his alter ego, so to speak. And soon maybe he

  wouldn’t even need it anymore.

  Not if things went according to plan and this woman

  turned out to be the one. He certainly hoped she was.

  Otherwise, he’d have to drag her out into the woods and

  kill her, as he’d done with all the others.

  3

  N ikki woke to a hand around her throat and a sour,

  musky stench in her nose. Hot breath panted

  against her cheek and a low, ugly voice snarled in her ear,

  “Don’t move, bitch. You move and you’re dead.”

  Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. It was her worst nightmare—the nightmare of any woman living alone, as

  she had been for the last seven years. That was one reason she’d gotten Max—for protection.

  Max? Where is Max? Dimly she remembered letting the big dog out for a last run before going to bed. No matter how cold it got, he always had to have one last frolic in the forest before he settled down in front of the fire in the living room, which was where he slept most nights. But wouldn’t he be back by now? What time was it anyway? Her brain still felt addled by the amount of wine she’d consumed but the terror

  of her situation was rapidly bringing things into focus.

  “Who…who are you?” she gasped. “How did you get in?

  Please don’t hurt me!”

  “I’ll only kill you if I have to,” the man snarled. Or was it a man? In the semi-gloom of the bedroom he seemed to have a shaggy, furry outline with pointed ears near the top of his head. It must be some kind of fur coat with a mask to conceal his identity.

  A freezing gust of wind from an open window answered her second question at least. Damn it, she’d gotten too complacent about safety lately! How could she not even latch

  her windows? How careless could she be? But it was freezing

  outside—barely 15 degrees Fahrenheit by the thermometer when she’d gone to bed. How could she know that someone

  would come out in the bitter cold to attack her?

  “Please,” she gasped again, as he shifted his grip on her

  throat and reached into his pocket with the other hand.

  “Shut up, bitch! Now open your mouth.”

  “But—”

  A blinding light was suddenly shining full in her face and

  the hand around her throat tightened warningly.

  “I said open your fucking mouth!”

  Feeling sick, Nikki parted her lips. She could imagine what the attacker wanted to shove in her mouth and the very

  thought made her want to retch. His sour, musky smell was

  bad enough without—

  To her surprise, what felt like a common cotton swab was

  thrust roughly between her teeth and scraped at the inside of one cheek. Then it was withdrawn and the attacker dropped

  the super bright flashlight to the bed and fumbled something

  else out of his pocket. In the glow from the dropped light, Nikki saw what looked like a small round glass vial with a screw-top lid.

  Working one-handed, because he still had his left hand clenched around her throat, her attacker awkwardly

  unscrewed the vial and shoved the swab he’d just put in her

  mouth into the narrow opening. At once, the clear gel began

  to turn green, tendrils of the new color spreading from the tip of the cotton swab and infiltrating the gel in emerald threads.

  “Finally!” the man above her breathed. “You have the

  Gene—I knew it!”

  “I…I have the what?” Nikki asked but the attacker didn’t answer.

  He pocketed the tube of green gel and drew out something

  else—a syringe.

  “What…what is that?” she gasped, shrinking away from

  the needle shining in the beam of the flashlight. “What are

  you doing?”

  “Giving you what you need. Hold still, bitch!” he growled

  roughly as she tried to get away.

  “No…no!” Nikki begged, twisting this way and that. She didn’t know what was in the syringe and she didn’t want to

  know—she only knew she didn’t want it stuck in her.

  The hand on her throat squeezed tighter.

  “It doesn’t matter where I inject this, you know,” her attacker snarled. “I could shove it in your juicy little cunt if you want. Or what about your eye?”

  He leaned forward, suddenly shoving his face into hers.

  Most of his face was in shadows but Nikki was horrified to see that one eye socket was empty.

  “Please!” she gasped, jerking her head back from the

  leering face. She had an idea she ought to be trying to commit his features to memory but all she could stare at was

  that empty socket—that one missing feature which horrified

  her so completely she felt like she might be sick. Especially since his other eye seemed to blaze yellowish-orange in the

  reflected light of the flashlight—an inhuman, demonic color.

  A needle plunged into her arm, just below her elbow, and

  a fiery burning pulsed through her veins. Nikki tried to scream but the cruel hand around her throat tightened even

  more, choking the air from her, making her feel like she was

  drowning. Her hands beat weakly at the strong arm holding

  her and she gasped for air, bright stars exploding in front of her eyes.

  “Now we wait,” the man snarled in her ear.

  “Wait…for what?” she choked out.

  “To see if you’re the one. But of course that can take a little while. Let’s help it along with a little selective breeding.” He straightened up, his hand loosening just enough for her to get a sip of air to her starving lungs. “Of course I can’t breed you like this. First I’ll have to change.”

  Nikki had no idea what he was talking about or what he had injected her with.

  He’s crazy, she thought, her heart slamming against her ribs in terror. Completely crazy!

  Then the one-eyed attacker reached for the top of his head and pulled the furry robe he was wearing low over his

  shadowed face. It had an animal muzzle attached to it, she saw—a long, snarling maw filled with sharp yellow teeth.

  He began to change, to grow…to shift somehow. And to Nikki’s horror, it seemed like the animal face he had pulled

  over his own, actually became his face.

  The eye—he still had only one—blazed to malevolent life

  and the jaws— formerly frozen in a permanent snarl—

  opened and closed. At the same time her attacker seemed to

  be getting bigger and hairier. The sour stench rose to a reek, filling the entire room with a miasma of foulness. The fingers wrapped around her neck were suddenly tipped with

  cla
ws—they dug into her flesh, leaving long, bloody

  scratches.

  “No!” she screamed. “No!”

  “Spread your legs, bitch,” the thing on top of her

  growled. “I’m gonna breed you hard—make sure that shot takes e ect.”

  Suddenly the door to her room burst open and Max hurled

  himself straight at the creature’s throat with a volley of furious barking.

  The thing her attacker had become was clearly caught o

  balance.

  “What—” it began and then it fell o the side of the bed with Max on top of it, tearing at its hairy pelt and growling furiously.

  Nikki didn’t waste any time. She jumped out of bed and ran from the room, not even stopping to throw on a robe or

  slippers.

  The police! I have to call somebody—have to get help!

  But her cell phone was back in her bedroom and there was

  no way she was going back in, not when she could hear snarling and shouts and hoarse, animalistic screams. She had to get out of here—out of the house—had to get to safety.

  Throwing the front door open wide, she rushed out into the freezing night wearing nothing but her nightgown.

  4

  Detective Jase Saunders couldn’t sleep. Probably

  because he was one of the few people who knew the

  truth about the recent killings that had been

  plaguing his small hometown of Wolverton, North Carolina.

  Recently four women in their mid forties to mid fifties had been found slaughtered—torn and mauled by some kind of animal.

  Only Jase knew they weren’t animal attacks—they were

  murders.

  Unfortunately, there was no way he could convince his captain of that. Unlike Cougarville, the small town across the mountain from them, Wolverton wasn’t a place where the Shifters were out in the open. Though most of the Dire Wolf

  pack lived here—Jase, in fact, was their Alpha—there were also plenty of norms—regular humans who had no idea that

  Shifters were real and lived among them.

  The captain was a norm too, and while he was calling out

  wildlife experts and setting bear traps, Jase was the only one who knew they ought to be looking for a human perp—or at

  least one who was human part of the time.

  He was walking the streets where the last murder had taken place—a pretty, old-fashioned neighborhood that

  wouldn’t have looked out of place in a movie about Southern

  grace and charm. Steel Magnolias or The Notebook maybe. But almost all the houses here had backyards that led into the forest—which was where Sophie Tucker, a divorced woman

  in her fifties, had been mauled to death by some kind of animal.

  Only he’s not an animal—he’s a rogue Shifter. Or a rogue Skin-Walker if Reese Cooper is right.

  And Jase had no reason to think he was wrong. He’d been

  down at The Cougar’s Den a few months back, talking to the

  mechanic who ran Fox’s Autobody as well as Liam Keller, who was the mayor of Cougarville, and Mathis Blackwell, a buck Shifter who lived in the area. Reese had actually fought with the Skin-Walker and taken his eye when the bastard tried to rape Jo, Reese’s mate.

  Jase had interviewed Jo as well, who was a Wiccan. He had

  gone to her looking for insights on the killer, hoping to find a way to trap the bastard before he killed again…

  “Bianca—the witch who turned him into a Skin-Walker—

  just called him Mr. X,” Jo said, looking uncomfortable as she helped Fiona ShadowTree, the pharmacist who ran and

  owned The Cougarville Chemist, sort ingredients. The two women were picking through what appeared to be a random

  pile of feathers, leaves, bones, and shells and separating them into smaller piles as far as Jase could see. He wondered what kind of medicine Fiona would turn them into.

  Fiona ShadowTree was a woman of indeterminate age

  with a cable of thick auburn hair shot through with skeins of the purest silver—not white and not salt and pepper— silver.

  On the day of Jase’s visit she was wearing a deep crimson caftan under her white smock coat and enough gold and amber jewelry to sink a ship.

  But despite her eccentric appearance, or maybe partly because of it, Fiona was revered as a Wise Woman by all the

  Shifters in the area. She often arbitrated disputes which couldn’t be brought to the norms, who ran the local law enforcement , and gave advice to anyone seeking help.

  “To send a Skin-Walker out into the world is dark magic

  indeed,” she said softly, turning her large, dark eyes up to Jase. “For they cannot return to their human form until they

  kill.”

  “Which means every time he turns, he has to kill

  afterwards,” Jase growled, raking a hand through his thick black hair. “So why is he turning so often? And why is he killing these women?”

  “You say they’re all around the right age for

  Rejuvenation, right?” Jo asked, frowning. “Forties and fifties

  —just about the time the Shifter Gene kicks in if it’s going to.”“But the Gene only begins working if the woman in question is unmated and hasn’t had sexual relations with a male who claims her as his own for at least six months,”

  Fiona reminded her. “It sounds to me like all of the victims

  fit that description and yet they hadn’t begun to regenerate.

  Which makes me think that if they had the Gene, it must have been recessive or latent in all of them.”

  “Right.” Jase nodded and looked at Jo. “But according to

  your mate, this Mr. X is a highly placed executive in one of

  the top pharmaceutical companies. Right?”

  Jo nodded, her bright, reddish-gold hair looking muted in

  the dim light of the pharmacy.

  “Samantha and Keller think the company has to be

  Pfizer,” she said. “The man who kidnapped Samantha and did all kinds of awful experiments on her was working for them and apparently he mentioned someone high up in the

  organization was bankrolling him.”

  “I’ve checked Pfizer,” Jase said, hearing the frustration in his own voice. “They don’t have any executives who have recently lost an eye. In fact, I can’t find any one-eyed executives in any of the major pharmaceutical companies.

  And I’ve looked into them all.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective.” Jo shook her head. “All I know is

  that whoever Mr. X is, he must have access to the

  Rejuvenation formula. Samantha was injected with it and it

  forced her Rejuvenation. In my case, one of our elder witches, Bianca, allowed it to be dumped into the drinking supply of the compound where I lived with my sister

  Wiccans.” She shrugged. “I was the only one it worked on—I

  guess because I was the only one with a recessive Gene.”

  “Can anything be done about this Skin-Walker bastard—

  magically I mean?” Jase demanded. He wouldn’t normally have asked such a thing. Though Shifting was itself a kind of magic, it was something a person with the Shifter Gene was

  imbued with—their animal self was a part of them. He didn’t

  particularly care for spells and incantations or anything that wasn’t completely straightforward.

  Jo shook her head.

  “Nothing to make him better, no.”

  “What?” Jase demanded. “Are you saying there are

  magical ways to make it worse?”

  The petite red-haired witch had looked unhappy but she

  lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.

  “Yes.”

  She was considerably too tiny and skinny for Jase’s taste

  —he preferred a woman with meat on her bones—but he

  could see why Reese loved her. There was courage in her
eyes

  and her voice didn’t tremble when she spoke.

  “If he found another witch to help him—or even if he found the right ritual himself—he might be able to change himself from a Skin-Walker to more of a Shifter. That is,

  he’d be able to Shift back and forth at will like we can. Well, those of us who aren’t pregnant, anyway.” She put a hand to

  her softly rounded belly. “But he’d need a Rejuvenating female—a Juvie—in order for it to work.”

  “You mean if he gets his hands on a Juvie and works this

  spell he could turn back to his human form without killing?”

  Jase asked. “How is that worse?”

  “Because it might not go that way,” Jo said in a low voice.

  “If the spell goes wrong—and it’s dark magic so there are infinite ways it could go wrong—then, well…”

  “He could become a monster. Even more so than he is now,” Fiona put in. “Unable to change back to human form

  at all—unable to stop killing.”

  “He appears to be fucking unable to stop that now.

  Pardon my language,” Jase growled. “He’s killed four

  women so far—I just don’t want there to be a fifth.”

  “I hope you find him Detective Saunders. I…” Jo

  swallowed hard. “I still have nightmares about that night. If Reese hadn’t been there…and if you hadn’t come when he called for help…”

  “I just did what was necessary,” Jase said, uncomfortable,

  as always, with any kind of thanks or praise.

  He himself had killed Bianca, the elder witch who had been working with Mr. X, because Reese had begged him to

  do it. Jase had been in wolf form at the time, running with his pack during the full moon, when he heard Reese’s howl

  for help. The older witch had been working a spell to drain Jo’s life force at the time and she had almost died before Jase intervened. Mr. X was long gone by the time he got there, though—he had fled after Reese had taken his eye.

  “Well, we appreciate what you did,” Jo told him firmly.

  “A hell of a lot, Detective.”

  “And I for one believe that you will be rewarded for your

  bravery,” Fiona said. “Lady Moon has her eye on you, Jase

  Saunders. I’m certain she has. She might even have a mate for you. Reese told me you were wishing for one.”