Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (4 page)

Sirens. He heard sirens. The rumble of gathered voices like thunder, a storm not far off. Ominous. Threatening. More faces above him, police officers pushing people back, EMTs. But all of them look strange, now, like shadows of people, like two dimensional gray things he had to blink to see.

He didn’t feel drunk anymore.

Words echoed. Dead. He’s dead. You’re dead. I’m dead.

I’m dead.

Another face above him, suddenly, but this one isn’t a shadow. A young guy, Latino maybe, with a goatee and a cigarette burning. He’s real, this one. Full color, 3-D, like Kenny could reach out and touch him. So he tried. At first it was like his hand was underwater. But then his fingers broke the surface and he stretched an arm out, up . . . and the goateed guy grabbed his hand and hauled him up onto his feet.

Kenny’s stomach convulsed and he felt like he was going to puke. But not from the beer. He wasn’t drunk anymore. Not at all.

He leaned on the guy for balance and the smoke got in his eyes, but the weirdest thing was he couldn’t smell it. Couldn’t smell the smoke at all, and usually the acrid odor of cigarettes made him nauseous.

“
Hey,” said the smoking man. “Hey. What’s your name?”

Kenny opened his mouth. Wasn’t sure if anything would come out. He glanced around him and saw that the people, the buildings, South Street Seaport itself . . . everything looked as though he were watching it on an old black-and-white TV with bad reception. Everything except the river, and the guy with the cigarette and the goatee. Those were real.

“
I’m Kenny,” he said. “Kenny Boone.” And the introduction reminded him of Jasmine and her sharp teeth. Jasmine who had . . .

“
Call me Rafe,” the guy said. “Don’t worry, Kenny. You’re off balance right now, but you’ll be feeling better soon. Get your bearings and stuff, y’know?”

“
I’m dead,” Kenny told Rafe.

Rafe smiled and nodded kindly. “Sí, amigo. You got it in one. Better than most.”

Kenny wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but all he felt was a kind of numb resignation. He turned around and there, on the ghost-gray pavement, he saw a pair of expensive Italian leather shoes sticking out from between the two EMTs who crouched there.
Me,
he thought.
But how could it be? I’m here.

Forlorn, he turned to look at Rafe again, thinking this was just the perfect end to the perfect day. Smoke from Rafe’s cig curled in the air but Kenny still couldn’t smell it.

But he smelled something. Something . . . what was that smell? Like skunk and burning rubber.

Rafe’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no!”

“
What?” Kenny demanded. “What is it?”

“
Run, man! Just run!”

With that, Rafe took off, running flat out across the gray cobblestones as though he were in the final stretch of a marathon. As Rafe ran, the shadows of the living seemed to swirl and undulate around him like thick fog. Kenny knew that wasn’t possible, that in the flesh and blood world it was still a hot August night where something awful had happened, but that everyone would go home to their lives. Not Rafe,
though. Not Kenny. Not anyone over here, ’cause this wasn’t the flesh-and-blood world.

There were only ghosts here.

Slowly, hesitant in his confusion, Kenny started to run after Rafe. It didn’t feel like running, though. More like falling. Simple as that, really. He tried to follow Rafe through the smog-shapes of the living, of the flesh world, but the man was gone.

Somewhere far off he heard shouts of alarm and knew somehow that they were cries of the dead, the shouts of ghosts, not voices from the flesh world.

“
Rafe?” Kenny called.

No, no,
he thought.
Not going to be alone again. Not here.

He ran faster, the shadows of life all around him, obfuscating his vision for a moment so he had to wave his hands in front of his face to brush them away, push the life away.

Please, no,
Kenny thought.

Then he slowed. Frowned. There was that smell again.

He paused, began to turn. “What is that?” he whispered into the land of the dead.
There are only ghosts here,
he thought again.

But he was wrong.

As he turned, it lunged from the flesh-shadows with a roar that washed away the gray all around him, silenced the voices in the distance for just an instant until, somewhere, ghosts began to scream. Soul-sucking eyes big as half-dollars burned with hunger as it stared at him. A thick, green, leathery tongue slid out over a mouthful of teeth like razor blades, viscous drool dripping from its snout.

“
Only ghosts,” Kenny whispered. He began to back up, hands raised. “Not fair. It isn’t fair. What . . . what happens now? After this?”

Its claws lashed out, tore Kenny open, then hauled him up and began to eat.

“
Not fair,” Kenny moaned again.

Then he was no more.

C H A P T E R 1

Like a ghost, the framed photo of Jack Dwyer’s mother seemed to stare at him from atop his bureau. He caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and grinned, feeling foolish. On his bed lay several T-shirts and two pairs of denim shorts he had discarded. Jack ran a hand through his unruly hair and then reached up into his closet for a gray Boston Red Sox shirt he had only worn a couple of times. He wasn’t a big sports fan, so he always felt like a poseur when he wore it, but he figured it was more interesting than a plain Gap T-shirt and slightly more subdued than the one with the big Batman logo on the front.

Plus the clock was ticking.

From a chair in the corner of the room, he picked up the blue jeans he had tossed there moments before and put them on. Belt, wallet, car keys, then socks and sneakers. As he sat on the bed, lacing up his sneakers, he glanced up again at the picture of his mother, Bridget. She had died when Jack was nine years old, and he wondered if that was why just looking at the photo could make him feel like a child.

He bounced up off the bed and paused briefly in front of the bureau to gently touch the corner of the frame. Though he had few strong memories of his mother, he clearly recalled her standing in his bedroom doorway so many times, trying to get him to hurry and decide what to wear to school that day. More often than not, she had had to decide for him.

It was a rare day off for Jack. Along with his older sister Courtney, he owned and managed Bridget’s Irish Rose Pub, their inheritance from their mother. When he was working, the only thing he had to decide was what color his shirt was going to be, for every day he wore one embroidered with Bridget’s logo on the breast.

That was simpler, and Jack liked things simple.

At the door, he paused and glanced around the room, feeling as though he had forgotten something. His gaze settled on his nightstand, and he strode quickly back to snatch up the book that lay there,
Journal of the Gun Years,
a western by Richard Matheson. One last time he patted his pockets to confirm the presence of his wallet and keys, then he strode out of the room.

The Dwyer siblings owned the whole building, and their apartment above the pub consisted of two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room that doubled as a guest room. Lately the “guest room” had become a semi-permanent third bedroom for Molly Hatcher, a friend of the family, though her relationship to Jack and Courtney was far more complicated than that.

Jack poked his head into what had become Molly’s room, but she wasn’t there.

“Mol?” he said, glancing about the hallway.

“In here.”

Her voice had come from Courtney’s room. Curious, Jack went across the hall and stood in the open door. Courtney lived a pretty Spartan life, and what she had she kept neat. A bed, a desk and chair, a computer, a bureau. Yet while once her room had looked so empty as to make one wonder if anyone actually lived there, in the past month it had acquired a new sort of clutter in the form of newspaper clippings and internet articles that were pinned on the walls all about the room.

Molly stood beside Courtney’s desk and stared at one of the articles. She wore cutoffs that drew attention to her long legs and a light cotton shirt unbuttoned over the green tankini top she wore. Her usually unruly red hair was tied back in a ponytail and she held her hands on her hips as though what she read had made her angry.

“Hey,” Jack said. “You ready?”

When she turned, a hint of that anger and frustration remained on her face. Then Molly saw him, and smiled happily.

“Are you sure jeans are the most comfortable beach wear?” she teased.

He shrugged. “I look stupid in shorts.”

“You’re going to look stupid in jeans. Tell me you at least own a bathing suit. I mean, I know you don’t get out much, but—”

“I haven’t been to the beach in a year,” Jack confirmed. “But I do own a bathing suit, thank you very much. I’m wearing it under my jeans.”

“Good,” she said. “Now all we need are beach towels and we can get out of here.”

But they both hesitated a moment, the brightness of their conversation dimming somewhat. Jack glanced at the articles on the wall again, and Molly turned to follow his gaze.

“Courtney find something new?” he asked.

Molly studied the wall, hugging herself now. “A lot of little things. Suspicious things in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Quebec . . . let me see . . . Arizona, L.A. Mutilation murders mostly, though the Wisconsin one was some builders who found some remains while digging a foundation for a house. Yeah, I’d want my house built there now. Might be Prowler killings or they might be something else.” Jack stepped up behind her and examined the printouts and clippings, the grisly headlines, photographs of the victims alive and well and smiling.

“Chances are, most of them are human killers, and the FBI or the local cops will catch up to them,” he reminded her. “But we can’t go running around the country every time there’s some nasty murder. We’re not detectives. If a pattern shows up, or if somebody says they saw a monster, then we’ll look into it. We’ll fight them when we can find them. But there’s only the four of us, Molly, and it’s a big country.” Grim-faced, she turned to him. “What makes you think it’s just this country?”

Jack nodded. “A big world out there, exactly. We can’t be the only people who know the Prowlers exist. There must be others out there who are fighting them.”

“We should find those people, then,” Molly said, her eyes searching his.

“You’re probably right.” Jack glanced away a moment, then he studied her curiously. “There’s only so much we can do. We have lives to lead. Responsibilities. You’re going away to Yale in less than two weeks, Molly. It isn’t like you can take off on some hunting trip to Arizona after that.” For a long moment she stared at him and Jack wanted to turn away from the intensity of her gaze, but would not. Molly hated the Prowlers as much as he did, probably more. They had discovered the monsters’ existence several months before, when a pack had come to Boston, and Artie Carroll had been one of the first to die.

Jack’s best friend.

Molly’s boyfriend.

Jack and Molly had always been close, but Artie’s death created a new intimacy for them, both in their need to grieve together, and, after the discovery of the Prowlers’ existence, in their need to destroy the creatures. Over the ensuing months they had done both, and during that time Molly had left the home of her brutal, alcoholic mother and moved in with the Dwyers.

It simplified things and complicated them all at once. Molly started to work in the pub, they focused their efforts on tracking news stories that might lead them to new Prowlers, and they tried to pretend that their intimacy was not on the verge of becoming something more than friendship. Not that it was a bad thing, these feelings they clearly had for each other, the single kiss they had shared in Vermont a month earlier when they had almost died.

It would have been nice, but Artie had been dead only a few months and Molly was obviously still haunted by his memory.

Jack, on the other hand, was haunted by his ghost.

Shortly after Artie’s murder, the ghost had appeared to Jack in the pub after hours, and had touched him somehow, pried open a place in his mind that would allow Jack to see other spirits as well. Lost souls. A spirit world Artie called the Ghostlands. Among those lost and wandering phantoms were many of the victims of the Prowlers. With their help, Jack and Molly had survived, had destroyed a lot of monsters. Molly knew about the Ghostlands, but at Artie’s request Jack had never told her that her dead boyfriend’s ghost still hung around. He thought she suspected, but she didn’t
know.

Complicated.

The silence between them lingered too long.

“Yeah,” Molly said at last, her voice a hush. “Two weeks and I’ll be gone. Then you can have your living room back.”

Jack didn’t know what to say to that. He clutched the book in his hand and shifted uncomfortably, gave her a little half-smile without knowing what it was for.

“We should go,” Molly said at last.

“I’ll get the towels,” Jack replied. “You’ve got the radio?”

“In my room. I’ll grab it.”

They met up again moments later at the door that led down into the restaurant. It was not quite nine o’clock in the morning, two hours before they would open for the lunch crowd. The kitchen staff would begin arriving any minute, and the waiters in less than an hour, but for the moment, Courtney Dwyer was the only other person in the place.

When Jack and Molly went down the stairs, Courtney was sitting at one of the round tables in the restaurant section of the pub. The place was all dark wood and brass rails and Chieftains on the sound system overhead, a quintessential Irish pub, but a little bigger, a little brighter, a little cleaner.
Boston
magazine had singled them out twice in the past three years, which was good for business.

“Everything under control?” Jack asked as they walked over to the table.