THE PINES—OCTOBER 12th, 1992 | EARLY MORNING

  ?

  Dean eyed him up and down.

  He had a gut on him. A proper girdle, like the damn fool had eaten one too many pieces of cornbread one too many times on one too many days of his life. Folks like this weren’t all that uncommon at the checkpoint. Strays from the United States and Canada didn’t make it to the Pines if they didn’t have something to their name, or something on their person, or some kind of leverage to get them out of situations like this—ugly, greasy situations. And this guy, as far as Dean could tell, fell into two of those categories; a stray with something to his name and something on his person.

  Dean whistled a cool whistle. “All alone then, huh, mister?”

  His office was small, but it had character. Real character, none of that decorative and pricey bullshit that was put in places just to fill up space. Along the walls were trophies in the form of taxidermied heads: a wendigo head, seidbear head, a harpy head, and his favorite and by far the largest, a leshen head. Bullet magazines crowded his desk, stacked next to a box of hand grenades, which sat next to a silver hunting knife, which sat next to a collection of empty beer cans. A pair of pink panties hung off the edge of his chair. The room reeked of cigarettes and stale intimacy.

  Two men adorned in flannels and kevlar vests held him up on either side.

  He’d already been beaten bloody, his large nose crooked, his receding hairline steeped in flakes of dirt. The suit he wore might’ve been a nice tan color before he stumbled into the checkpoint, but it was brown now, covered in mud and blood and some secret third thing that Dean couldn’t name or place. Could’ve been shit. Could’ve been piss. But there was no smell, and Dean was none the wiser.

  “We uh, separated him from a group of three,” said one of the two men. Randal. A newer guy. Ex-military, ex-Canadian stray. Dean remembered putting a gun to his head and giving him a choice: join or die.

  Dean tapped his fingers along the metal surface of his desk. “Ah-huh, ah-huh. And uh, the other two—them boys are, what, well on their way to Brinehaven, or what?”

  “Fiends,” said the other. Jackie, his name was. Short, with a gut that eclipsed their new captives, and a stench that Dean could almost respect. “Some of the other guys are meetin’ the Order at the halfway point along the main stretch.”

  Dean nodded. “And what’s this guy got that is any business of mine?”

  The man had been gagged with a thick piece of cloth. He whimpered behind it, and his wide eyes stretched even wider.

  “Well, uh,” Randal began. “You told us and the others we ought to bring people who have got goods on them to you.”

  “No,” Dean said, tutting his tongue along his lips. “I said, damn it, that you ought to bring people with artificed goods to me. Now, you boys tell me if you see any of that on him, ‘cause I don’t see a damn thing.”

  “Right pocket,” Jackie said. “We made em’ put it in his right pocket, ‘cos we was scared bout’ if, well, y’know, the damn thing was cursed.”

  Dean got up from the metal chair he’d been sitting in, and moved his legs off the half-rusted metal desk that he called his own. He dug a hand into the man’s slacks, first withdrawing a wallet and checking its contents. A few wads of cash were in there, which Dean took and folded into his own pocket.

  He tilted his head a bit and awarded his attention to the man’s driver’s license.

  “Bradley Robb. Connecticut. Hah! Now you, you’re a looong way from home, Mr. Robb,” Dean said. He handed the license to Randal. “You go and burn that, or something, along with the clothes.”

  Bradley whimpered and struggled within the grasp of the two men holding him.

  Dean whistled and smacked Bradley’s face. “Now you calm down, hear?”

  A desperation burned in Bradley’s throat. He thrashed and thrashed and thrashed. Randal and Jackie struggled to keep hold of him while maintaining their balance. Dean inhaled. With a deftness that defied reason, he withdrew his handgun from his equipment belt. The safety was already off. Dean pulled the slide back once and planted the barrel to his head.

  Blood spattered along the concrete floor. Randal winced. Jackie flinched. Bradley’s body fell onto the ground. Dean’s ears rang from the sound of the gunshot, and he crouched down alongside Bradley, reaching into his pocket once more, his ringed fingers rummaging around. Before he even withdrew his hand, a broad smile took hold of his features. He withdrew a ring.

  “Ah-hah,” Dean said. “Nah. Now see, this isn’t cursed, boys.”

  Randal and Jackie glanced down at Dean.

  Dean, crouched, held up the ring proudly. It was handcuff-shaped, and black like Drychus steel. It barely fit over his pinkie. “Phew! What are the chances? This here, boys, completes the hand. A fifth to my other four, you see? You done good, J-Man, Randal.”

  “What’s it do?” Randal asked.

  Dean glanced alongside his other rings. Distinct as it was, it hardly looked out of place next to his other ones. Spitfire, Ichor, Carapace, and Bane would be in good company. He stood up, holstered his handgun along his equipment belt, and held his hand up closer to the single light bulb overhead, which swayed back and forth along its rusted chain.

  “Once I got a chance to test it out, I’ll tell you,” Dean said. “Unless one of you wants to volunteer, yeah?”

  Randal and Jackie both shook their heads.

  Dean smiled. “Ah, worth a try.”

  Dean reached into his pocket, where he’d taken Bradley’s money for himself, and unfolded the wad of cash. He licked one finger and counted each bill and split them evenly, pacing first to Randal and shoving a portion of it along his belt loop, and then doing the same for Jackie. “You two buy yourself something nice. But get rid of this body first, yeah?”

  Randal glanced down at Bradley’s corpse. “Off the cliffside of the main road, then?”

  “No,” Jackie said assuredly. “Better we toss it into the alchemical waste, you know, the uh, the sludge, the green glowing stuff next to Bluestein’s processing plant—”

  Dean paced towards the door to his office. “Hey! Don’t much matter to me what the fuck you do with him, just don’t be stupid about it. Don’t need bossman on my ass ‘cause the twos of you went and screwed the pooch. Rack those big heads of yours together and figure it out.”

  Jackie and Randal nodded.

  Dean issued them a finger gun, a smile, and a whistle before closing the door behind him.

  ?

  He sat with his feet kicked up on a conference room table, admiring his completed set of rings with a stupid grin on his face under the dim yellow lights. Calling it a conference room was generous. Most of the Argent Group Headquarters was lackluster in its presentation, more functional than anything else: a glorified trucking depot and warehouse that only happened to double as a central hub for their activities, surrounded by grit and clamor, mirroring just about everything else in the Commonwealth Industrial Park.

  “Feet off the damn table, D,” a man said. “They’ll be here soon, and I’ll need you on your best behavior.”

  Damon Argent was a man of average height with skin that looked more sickly than it looked pale, even though he walked and talked with an energy earned from experience. He wore a beige duster jacket with the logo of the Argent Group on one of its shoulders: a skull biting down onto a sideways letter A, same as the one tattooed on Dean’s neck. Longish and muted red hair draped down to his shoulders, and an unkempt beard made him look older than he was.

  “These suits are no good business, Damon,” Dean said, half-jokingly.

  “Funny, D, I remember you liking their corporate money,” Damon said.

  “Said I liked money in general, didn’t say I liked corporate money,” Dean clarified.

  “Their money is corporate money,” Damon countered. “And it sure as hell pays better than our usual services. Those bums in Silver Falls who need to go to and from the Park couldn’t afford the fuckin’ value of what it is we really offer. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.”

  “And here we are, eh? With our humble fleet of falling-apart humvees and trucks and odds and ends, taking drunks and good, decent, bluecollar folk back and forth between two paradises.”

  Damon laughed and shook his head. “Shut the hell up, D.”

  Dean could feel Damon’s eyes on him, but felt compelled not to share a glance with him. They were uncanny and weird and wise, black in color with a yellow tint where the white of his eyes should’ve been, like he was sick, like he had a real bad case of jaundice. And those eyebrows, thick like caterpillars on his face, and dark like the fur of a black bear.

  “Nah, now, you listen here, really listen to what I’m about to say,” Dean said, removing his boots from the conference table. “You got Silver Falls, the edge of civilization, and the end of anything Godly and pure, even with those fucking wardens snooping around, all up in their business. Paradise one, it's a paradise of bars and brawls and bitches who’ll take what they can get. A mecca of greasy fuckin’ men with greasy fuckin’ jobs with greasy fuckin’ opinions that you don’t ask them about.”

  “And you should know,” Damon said.

  “And I should know!” Dean said, bringing a closed fist to his kevlar-covered chest. “That’s fuckin’ right I should know! You name a better man whose come up out of Silver Falls other than Dean fuckin’ Dresker, see. Go ahead.”

  Damon scoffed. “At a loss, D. Must be you. Has to be you.”

  Dean nodded knowingly. “Now, the other end of paradise. Paradise of industry, home of titans and barons and—and, and owned by men who’d never step foot in those places that all them workers go to work to. Factories that pump out protection and poison in equal goddamn parts.”

  “Wrap it up, Dean,” Damon said sternly. “Say your piece. Finish your spiel. Bluestein is going to be here soon, and I don’t want you mucking up our meeting with your fucking ramblings.”

  “And then there’s us, Damon,” Dean said, pacing towards him and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. He grabbed Damon’s chin and shook his face endearingly. “Us. Our trucks. Our men. We’re like the fuckin’ ferrymen, the uh, the uh, fuck, we’re that guy. All of us are that guy, from them old tales those olive-munching Greeks liked to tell, between paradises.”

  “Charon,” Damon said. “And there was only one Charon. One ferryman, between the living world and the underworld. That creepy fuck, he took people between the world of the living and the underworld, D, not two paradises.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever,” Dean retorted. “Point is, we get people from point A to point B in a place that don’t want that to happen. And all of that, Damon, is to say that yessir, of course the folks over in Silver Falls couldn’t afford the value of what we offer.”

  Damon shoved Dean off of him. “What we’re offering them isn’t transport service, D. You know that. I know that.”

  “It don’t matter!” Dean said passionately. “What matters is they know that we’re the ferrymen, and that the ferrymen demand a high price for services rendered.”

  “Corporate money,” Damon said. “That’s what I told you. What I was trying to tell you, before you went off your rocker there. We’ll get what we’re owed, D. The full value of what we offer.”

  Dean threw a single hand up, almost in defeat. “Hey. Don’t fault a guy for a good pep talk, yeah?”

  A knock emerged on the door.

  “Doors open! Come in!” Damon yelled.

  Dean situated himself back into his seat.

  Damon sat across from him. “And I wouldn’t dream of it, D—happen to like your stupid damn pep talks. That's why you, out of everyone else, sit at this table of mine.”

  Dean nodded to himself in agreement, a stupid smile on his face.

  ?

  “Lycan,” said a man. “I suspect it is just one.”

  Dean didn’t like the look of him. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old either. Curly hair, a puffy mustache, stupid circular glasses that probably made him think he looked smarter than he was. Dean couldn’t decide what he disliked more, the glasses or that damned lab coat.

  “My men said they’ve been seeing beasts, la Cerva, a good number of them,” Damon said.

  “Garou, more than likely. A pack of proper lycans is a force to be reckoned with. Your men, they have not actually, well, killed any of these beasts, now, have they?” the man asked.

  “No,” Damon said. “They haven’t.”

  “Yes. Garou cannot be made without a lycan, but a pack of lycans would have no reason to create garou,” the man said.

  “And why’s that?” asked Dean.

  Damon issued Dean a disapproving stare.

  “Garou are thralls. Weaker, mindless, and liable to attack anything with a pulse; even their own maker,” he said.

  “Then why would it? The lycan, I mean,” Dean asked.

  “As a defense mechanism, maybe. The Order of the Wardens regularly patrols the Pines for demons and fiends and the like—a smart lycan is one who gives the Order distractions. But I suppose if the lycan is not indeed smart, then it could be any number of reasons,” he asserted.

  “Do they know, Mr. Argent? The Order, I mean,” asked a woman.

  She was short, no taller than five-foot-two, with a black vest over a white blouse. Dean liked the way she sat in her chair, and liked the way her torso looked in that blouse even more. Her hair was dark and set into a bun, and her face was pretty—refined, intense, with a set of glasses that all pointed to the fact that she was too good for a guy like him. Too rich and too prim and too important.

  “I suspect they do, yeah,” Damon said with a curt nod. “But they have their hands full with everything else that goes bump in the night in those woods. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any sightings at all. Which leads me to my proposition.”

  The woman raised a brow. “Which would be what, Mr. Argent? You have waited long enough to tell us. Do be brief.”

  Damon nodded in his direction. “As early as 1990, Ms. Dupre, we hand delivered kineticists crossing the border to you people. Breker Tonic is one of your best selling items, no? Goes off the shelves quickly in those boutique alchemy stores of yours.”

  Ms. Dupre folded her hands in front of herself, placing them onto the table. “Yes, Mr. Argent. I remember. Now, humor for a moment. The Order of the Wardens. As I understand, you have an agreement with them. A sort of.. quid pro-quo regarding fiends and occultists crossing into the Commonwealth by land; at least those who do so through the Argent Group’s checkpoint.”

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  Damon nodded. “That we do, Ms. Dupre, but these things aren’t at our checkpoint, they are in the Pines, and brazen enough to go after some of our escorts on the main road.”

  Ms. Dupre smiled. “Yes. How very true, Mr. Argent.”

  “The pitch, Damon,” Dean said, urging him.

  Damon narrowed his eyes at Dean. “Now, Breker Tonic—”

  Dean picked his nose. A booger was flicked over one shoulder. “Any word on those kineticists?”

  “They are in good hands,” Ms. Dupre asserted. “Mr. Argent, if I may be so direct, I’d prefer if you cut to the chase. I do not need a reminder of our brief collaboration two years ago. I am much more interested in what it is you stand to offer us now.”

  “Reagents,” the man in the lab coat said.

  Ms. Dupre glanced towards the man, who had been pacing around the cramped conference room, his dress shoes slapping against the rugged concrete. “Yes, Emilio. Go on.”

  “There are many things garou could be used for, reagent wise, to create an alchemical product,” Emilio said. “Both garou and lycan.”

  “You believe we can make something from it, then,” Ms. Dupre noted.

  “I can make something from it,” said Emilio, who adjusted the circular glasses along his face. “Though Breker Tonic was already a bit of an upset with Mr. Bluestein and the board of directions. They are.. resistant, Ms. Dupre, to the newer formulas. The ones not rooted in their family recipes.”

  “And Breker Tonic increased our quarterly profits as soon as it hit the shelves,” Ms. Dupre said. “Mr. Bluestein will get over it.”

  “Forgiveness, not permission, eh?” Dean said, wagging a finger in Ms. Dupre's direction. “I think I like you, lady. You got some big swangin’ balls on you.”

  “D,” Damon warned. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Dean held his hands up in appeasement.

  Damon unfurled his arms from his chest and slapped a hand on the conference room table. “The Argent Group is prepared to offer you its services in securing these garou. The lycan too. We’ll hunt them, deliver them to you.”

  “And the lycan?” Ms. Dupre asked.

  “Necessary,” Emilio said. “The garou require a lycan to be created. If this new population of garou in the Pines is hunted to, well, localized extinction, then we lose the ability to create a reproducible product. At the very least, we need the lycan captured and alive. In the same vein, there may yet be further reagents we can extract from the lycan to be used in conjunction with the garou reagents.”

  Dean squinted at him. “Ah-huh. So, them kineticists, back from two years ago. What exactly is the deal with them and that uh, other potion, Breker whatever—”

  Ms. Dupre glanced at him. “It is as I said before. They are in good hands.”

  Dean inhaled. He shook his head and a laugh escaped his lungs. “Whatever that means.”

  Damon cleared his throat. “Not our business, D. What is our business is—”

  “Securing an initial batch of garou corpses, first, for the purposes of my alchemical research,” Emilio blurted. “And securing the lycan thereafter. Perhaps at the same time, if you have the staff to spare for such a thing.”

  Dean raised two fingers. “Lycan is me. Damon can figure out the who and the how for the other things.”

  “Garou,” Emilio corrected.

  “Uh-huh,” Dean said. “That sound good, Damon?”

  Damon nodded.

  Ms. Dupre glanced at Dean and then towards Damon. “There is the matter of how the corpses will be delivered to our processing plant, Mr. Argent. And of similar importance is how the lycan will be delivered. We must, if possible, avoid wandering eyes while such sensitive items are being transported through the Commonwealth Industrial Park, yes?”

  “Our trucks,” Damon said. “My trucks. Easy as that.”

  Ms. Dupre seemed pleased with that answer. “Very well, Mr. Argent. Those terms sound acceptable. Now, you surely will want to be compensated. Name your price and I am sure we can negotiate something fair, no?”

  “Ten-thousand per garou corpse, five-hundred-thousand for the lycan delivered alive,” Damon said sternly. “And a contract. You’ll have Argent Group inside your facility protecting your wares for the next year, retainer fee of, oh, I don’t know—thirty a month. More than fair, if you ask me.”

  Ms. Dupre faked a smile. “Quite the steep price, Mr. Argent.”

  “And if this shit, whatever it ends up being called, sells anything close to what Breker Tonic continues to sell, then it’ll be worth the investment,” Damon argued. “The asking price of my business is a small drop in the sea of green you’re going to be swimming in. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it.”

  Dean whistled contentedly, clapping his hands together twice.

  Emilio glanced towards Ms. Dupre, awaiting her answer. Dean could see the eagerness radiating off of him like a pungent scent. He wanted this more than her, not because of the profit, or the money, but because of the chance he might get at doing whatever twisted damn research he had in mind. Care wasn’t a word that came to mind when he thought of those kineticists from years ago. That was a job like anything else, and whether or not Bluestein had them rotting in some secret cells somewhere or not wasn’t any of his business—that was no good business, the ugly kind, but that’s why they got along well with these suits. The Argent Group was in the trade of no good business too.

  “Well,” Dean said, standing up out of his chair.

  It fell behind him with a sudden thud, prompting Emilio to flinch. Dean made for the door and issued a finger gun to Ms. Dupre and a nod to Damon.

  “Where are you headed, D?” Damon asked.

  “To start looking for the lycan. Be seeing you,” he said.

  He closed the door behind him.

  ?

  Dean plunged his fingers into the sloshy red. Lukewarm, but still wet.

  He shook his head and repeated a set of tuts to himself. Blood along the main road wasn’t all that uncommon. There was always some kind of blood if it hadn’t been washed away by the rain, and no rain would be coming to the Pines until spring or summer. Mist surrounded him on all sides. Dense as always, and thick like a bowl of semi-transparent oatmeal. Dean hated the mist and the way it covered the trees and the undergrowth. For all of the fiends that lingered in the Pines, it was a damn beautiful place, but it had been years since he’d ever seen it in its fully glory.

  He didn’t need to do a whole lot of work.

  A brief trip to Silver Falls yielded him more than enough. Papa Desperado, owner of The Cattleyard Saloon and Barber, usually gave Dean something in the way of answers when he showed up for a trim. Silver Falls didn’t react to disappearances the way that other towns did. Workers got snatched up by all sorts of bullshit for as long as the town had been around, before and after the Order of the Wardens set up shop in that church of theirs. Drunks and rabblerousers who wandered into the Pines after dark stayed there, and people knew better than to look for them. Better to leave that to the people with the crosses and the shotguns than to the locals trying to make a decent living for themselves.

  Papa Desperado mentioned that a few guys had gone missing over a period of a few weeks—regulars of his who were no longer regulars on account of their absences. No one had any sympathy because everyone knew better than to stray too far from town, and some people, even longtime residents, found one reason or another to ignore the single unspoken rule that had kept more people alive than any escort services offered by the Argent Group or any patrolling or manhunts done by the Order of the Wardens: don’t leave the town at night, simple as. Dean knew he wasn’t the brightest tool in the shed. It wasn’t something he banked on to get him out of things. But if there was anything he was good at, it was finding danger—running towards it, breaking that single unspoken rule and living to tell everyone.

  He was far enough inland now.

  He reached towards his equipment belt and withdrew a handgun. The safety was switched off, the slide was pulled back, and he raised it up into the air. Gunshots rang out. Birds fluttered away from their branches. A pinecone fell. Dean’s expression soured. No growls, no yelps, no whimpers. Dogs were amok. Big, ghastly, ugly dogs, and he hadn’t seen so much as a tuft of fur or a single pile of steaming shit.

  Dean cleared his throat. “Ey!”

  Nothing.

  Dean looped his fingers together and whistled a loud whistle.

  “Here, dog! Here!” Dean yelled.

  Or, dogs. His invitation went unanswered until it didn’t. Yellow eyes emerged along the fringes of the undergrowth, and Dean smiled. He wasn’t handsome; but he felt more pretty in moments like these, in that brief and juicy window before chaos came running towards him in one form of another.

  His clip was halfway emptied. But he still had a silver hunting knife to his name, and more artificed rings than most people knew what to do with.

  “Come on now, damned mutts! Yippee ki fuckin’ yay!”

  Five of them. He’d be stealing the work out from whatever hunting party good old Damon had planned. They weren’t lycans, but they were damn near close. Mist wafted around their silhouettes as their features came into sight—gray-skinned, broad-backed, yellow-eyed monsters that were more wolf than man. Snarling faces, gaping maws, disjointed teeth, ingrown claws.

  Dean shifted one foot back, one foot forward, and gripped his gun with both hands.

  “Aaaaaannnnd..”

  A bullet pierced the neck of an oncoming garou. Another carved through its skull. One, two, dead. It skidded to a halt, and Dean ran towards its body.

  “One doggy down!” he yelled.

  The remaining four closed in on him.

  Among them, the one to the left was most eager.

  It snarled and leapt towards him.

  Dean unclasped a single hand from his gun. Ichor, the shrunken tentacle ring along his middle finger, hummed with power. A puddle emerged on the ground, dark and black and oozing. An inky tendril surged out from it, wrapping itself around the entire midsection of the oncoming garou. Dean, still standing on the corpse of the one he’d shot, pointed his gun towards the captive garou’s head. He fired. Its body went limp.

  Three remained.

  Of them, two were uncertain, scared, and snarled without taking any further steps.

  The third was emboldened—eager.

  So eager that it moved faster than Dean would’ve liked. It had leapt towards him, but before he could register much of its form, he saw only its teeth. He had seconds, maybe even less than that. Carapace, a ring made from a resin-embalmed scarab, activated. Greenish gold chiton erupted along his hand up and forearm. The teeth bit down into it and cracked. Blood spewed out from the garou’s maw.

  With his opposite hand, he shoved his handgun between the garou’s eyes and fired.

  He tried to fire again, for good measure, but his gun slide locked up. Out of bullets.

  Brain matter splashed across Dean’s kevlar.

  He withdrew his arm from the beast’s maw and turned towards the remaining garou, who were already on their way towards him.

  Spitfire, forged of a preserved tongue of some kind, murmured along his index finger.

  Smoke and cinder leaked from Dean’s nostrils. He reeled his head back and spat. A ball of fire left him and bursted against the fur of one of the garou, who whined and whimpered and groaned. It fell onto the ground and rolled. Dean puckered his lips and fired again, and after that, a third time. Immolated fur and bubbling gray skin filled the forest clearing with a stench unlike any other.

  The final garou yelped. It lowered itself to all fours, and it ran.

  Dean shook his hand out a bit. He holstered his emptied handgun along his belt and reached for his silver hunting knife. One eye closed in focus, and he flipped the knife upside down, holding its handle with a loose wrist.

  He whipped his hand forward.

  A trail of silver gleamed amidst the fog. The knife’s pointed tip plunged into the back of the garou’s head, killing it instantly.

  Dean smiled to himself. He sauntered towards the body, plunged the silver knife out of its skull, and attached it back to his equipment belt.

  "Five for five, oh! Now, where’s your fuckin’ daddy?”

  ?

  Carapace’s gauntlet broke and shattered. Dean felt teeth along his arm, and they cut deep. Beyond clothes, beyond flesh—like the bone of his forearm was being kissed by knives.

  Maybe she caught wind of him by scent, or by the sound of her dogs being euthanized. Dean didn’t have to venture far to find what he was looking for, and she didn’t have to either. And it was indeed a her; one mean momma. She stood closer to six-foot-five and was a heaping mass of black maroon fur, with a large tail to boot. A lycan. Not a garou, not a thrall, a proper, grade-A lycan. Faster, stronger, meaner, and magnitudes more relentless. And she was heavy. Damn, was she heavy.

  Dean was no guppie in the pond, but man sized and lycan sized were two very different things.

  He’d switched out his magazines prior to her coming up on him, and every bullet spent was a bullet wasted. Didn’t do shit. Not against her. Every bullet hole closed within the span of a few seconds, and they’d bothered her more than anything else.

  Then she had closed the distance and pinned him to a tree on account of her attempting removal of his forearm. Now they stood, a little bit more than strangers, sharing a contested gaze. Deep and scintillating yellow eyes bored into him. Not quite mindless, but deliberate in their rage in a way that chilled him to the bone.

  Carapace had been breached, and he’d been filling the Pines with his screams for the better part of the last minute.

  Dean knew he needed to move. To do something. Anything.

  And the first priority among others was getting her away from him.

  Bane, a ring made from the eye of a witch, ignited. Dark orange energy erupted along the ring, and Dean curled his finger inwards to point toward the lycan. Ochre erupted along the trees overhead. Wood creaked and splintered. Branches fell en masse as Bane forced out a localized disaster, tipping the sharpened ends of the wooden limbs downward.

  Oversized, makeshift stakes forced the lycan’s maw to unlatch around Dean’s forearm. Blood erupted from the lycan’s hulking frame, dousing Dean in a spurt of crimson. He fell onto his rear and groaned, pain punctuating each unintelligible syllable. Adrenaline kept him moving, but barely.

  Carapace was out. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t use that for a bit. Bane needed a few hours to recharge. Spitfire was practically useless—he had used it against her prior to being pinned to that tree: zilch, nada, nothing. All that was left was Ichor, and his new ring he didn’t have the first clue about. Old reliable, a silver knife, and a wild card: one to stun, one one to hurt, one to do whatever it was going to do.

  One by one, the lycan began to rip out oversized splinters from her body.

  Ichor pulsed.

  Beneath the she-wolf’s feet, a puddle of black emerged. Dredges of black stained her fur. A tendril erupted, wrapping around her body completely, struggling to keep her in place. Ichor’s tendril wouldn’t last long. Dean groaned and winced as he reached for his silver knife. He rose to his feet and stepped into the lycan’s personal bubble—a mistake even with Ichor wrapped around her and what remained of the fallen, sharpened branches plunged into her back and shoulders. Silver sizzled along the lycan’s skin.

  Her arm whipped forward. Black claws the size of daggers severed through Dean’s kevlar and carved out a chunk of his torso. Dean’s vision blurred. Silver sizzled along the lycan’s skin. His knife had been plunged into her lower stomach, and the pain it brought to her prompted a bellow.

  Damon wanted her alive, and damn it, he’d get her alive.

  Old reliable was a bust, and the silver knife only got him so far. All that was left to seal the deal was the wildcard; the ring he’d stolen from one sorry motherfucker, Bradley Robb from Connecticut, the great U-S-of-A. Power hummed along the ring that now covered his pinky finger, forged of a black metal and mirroring the shape of a pair of handcuffs.

  Dean’s gut told him to touch the lycan.

  And Dean’s gut was right.

  A brand emerged along the lycan’s skin where Dean had touched her. Sprawling out from it and materializing from the very air itself were black chains that burned and sizzled the fiend’s skin. Dean’s eyes widened in glee. Not black chains; chains of Drychus steel. They grew and grew from the brand until they wrapped around the lycan in a mess of binding, each chain tightening against her skin, sizzling it and burning it in the same capacity as the silver knife plunged into her gut.

  Burned flesh and burned fur sizzled, and the stench of it made Dean want to retch. Ichor’s tendril melted back into the puddle of black, which dissipated. Wooden stakes and wooden splinters had been outright dislodged on account of the lycan’s last lapse of thrashing and contorting as it reverted back to its human form.

  Dean shook his hand out.

  With his free hand, he reached for one of the vials of pasteurized demon blood along his belt. One would keep him from dying, but he’d need two to drag this girl—this woman, curly haired, copped-skinned, covered in dirt and blood—back to headquarters. Inhaling, Dean brought both vials to his mouth, bit both corks off, and drank the contents of both in tandem. He shook his head, winced, and felt his body recalibrate.

  He grabbed the woman by a single leg and dragged her along the dirt.

  With his free hand, Dean made the sign of the cross across his body, and pointed a finger up to the sky.

  “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name—ah, screw it. Today God’s name is Bradley fuckin’ Robb!”