Nightshatter

  NIGHTSHATTER: A Werewolf Thriller

  NIGHTSHIFTER SERIES BOOK TWO

  L. E. HORN

  Sherrington Publishing

  Contents

  Join the Author!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Nightshifter Series

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT © 2020 L.E. HORN

  All Art Copyright © 2020 L.E. Glowacki

  2020 Sherrington Publishing

  Canada ISBN: e-book 978-1-988431-14-7

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law. All characters and character likenesses are the property of L.E. Horn and cannot be reproduced without the written consent of the author.

  Disclaimer: This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or places are used fictitiously. The persons, places, things, and otherwise animate or inanimate objects mentioned in this novel are figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anything or anyone living or dead is unintentional.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Pending

  To my grandmother, who once wisely said,

  “It will be a lot of work, but it will be worth it.”

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  1

  The farmhouse stood dark and silent, and I had an eerie sense of déjà vu as I pulled into the drive. I turned off the truck and stared at the building, wishing my friend Peter was safely asleep within, and I was merely a human vet at a local clinic, home at the end of a long day.

  Had it really been a month since my dog, Keen, and I first saw the wolf-like creatures on the trail? Since I’d met Dillon, a human infected with a virus that had turned him into a monster? I remembered my first glimpse of him—black fur striped with moonlight and shadow, eyes almost human in his wulf face. My brain had tried to force his unfamiliar contours into wolf, but he’d attacked, I was bitten, and my life changed forever.

  “Liam?”

  The voice yanked me from my memories, and I met the eyes of the woman sitting in the passenger seat of my SUV. The pale yard light picked up copper highlights in her rich red hair, and her wide lips curved in a smile that made my heart flip over.

  Mesmerized by her lips, I almost leaned toward her, before I ripped my gaze away to stare out the windshield.

  Sam. Unlike Dillon and me, my Sam had been born into this life. While wulfan lived in balance with their wulf, wulfleng—the result of a wulfan exposing a human to the active virus in their blood—often failed to find that balance. If they lost the battle and turned pure wulf, it was wulfan enforcers who put them down. It was a fate I had narrowly averted.

  “Earth to Liam. Are we going to sit here all night?”

  I managed a quirk of a smile and slipped out of the vehicle. Keen jumped out with Sam and sniffed around the driveway. My much-loved mutt appeared engaged in typical must-find-the-perfect-pee-spot behaviour as we walked to the back of the house. She continued to sniff around the driveway, across the lawn to the edge of the forest, back to the foot of the deck, and down the steps to my door.

  A louder sniff beside me announced that Sam not only watched Keen but followed her obsession. Our noses in human form were not as sharp as when we changed to wulf, and all I could smell was a faint skunk aroma.

  “She’s tracking,” Sam said.

  Whatever Keen was tracking had gone right to the door of my basement suite.

  I sniffed harder. Skunk. Definitely.

  “You know you haven’t been home enough when the skunks try to move in,” I said, sketching a smile.

  Sam looked at me and spoke quietly. “I don’t think it was a skunk.”

  My eyebrows rose as she stripped right outside the door. The exposed smooth skin made my pulse pound, and I averted my stare until she’d shifted to her sleek russet-haired beast. Like a wolf, yet not—the wulf resembled a blend between human and animal, with long hind legs, wide shoulders, and a broad head with a distinct human cast to the eyes. Now trained to discern the variations in wulfan form, I detected Sam within the animal. Small-framed but strong and graceful, her wide-spaced gray eyes turned pure silver in her wulfan state.

  Watching her track the scent, I recognized how the bonding of man and beast reached its ultimate expression in those designated to protect the wulfan race. Enforcers like Sam combined human intellect with the power of the beast in perfect, synchronous balance. They processed their world through enhanced scent, sight, and sound; assessed it critically, then faced it wrapped in muscle, fangs, and fur—racing forward on silent pads.

  I longed to join her with my furry alter ego since my human one seemed so useless, but I thought of my old wulfan friend Peter, trapped within his wulf. Dillon had bitten him, too. And we now suspected Dillon had carried a mutated version of the wulfan virus, one that created huge, vicious wulfleng. It drove wulfan insane and who knew what it would do to me.

  Our friend Doc Hayek believed my wulf could fight it. That I might yet survive the mutant part of the infection. But until we knew more about it, my human form would have to do.

  I put down the bag of supplies that included the antiviral spray given us by the good doctor. We split to do a quick but careful circuit of the house. I crouched to peer in my windows but saw nothing. Back at my door, at the foot of the stairs that led to the basement suite, Sam sniffed around the frame, and the hair stiffened along her spine.

  I leaned in. Dillon’s rank, animal scent was all over my door, the frame, and the stairs, and I pictured him in wulf form—huge, all muscle and fangs and claws, reeking of madness. I shuddered. Was it due to the memory of killing him? Or the fact that his violence still caused so much pain? I wasn’t the only one he’d damaged. Poor Chloe was already dead. And now Peter . . . My mind filled with images of my wulfan friend crashing around in a steel cage, foam flying from his wulf jaws. Even Chris and Josh, my new friends who had helped me through my first transition into wulf form, might have been exposed to this dangerous mutant virus. Was Hayek right? Could the healing ability we inherited with our wulf, subdue the infection?

  The rank smell overlaid Dillon’s older scent. “All I smell is skunk.” I winced.

  “Cuver up thur odur,” Sam said through her wulfy mouth. Her silver eyes sparked fire.

  Wulfan had a distinctive scent. Their wulf was so blended with the human that both scents were always present. Wulfleng were different. When in wulf form, they had a musk containing wild overtones. Sometimes that carried over to their human side, but not always.

  Regardless, the only reason someone disguised their scent was if they spent part of their time as a wulf and knew others did as well. My heart accelerated. Why wa
s a strange wulfan—or wulfleng—skulking around my house? I wound my fingers in Keen’s ruff as I unlocked the door and swung it wide. Sam bounded in, passing through the small entryway and into the kitchen in a blur of red fur. Keen strained to follow, but I didn’t let her go until Sam re-emerged and opened her jaws.

  “Ull clear,” she said.

  I shut a frustrated Keen with our supplies in the basement suite, and we moved to the main part of the house where Peter used to live. Before he lost his mind and ended up in a cage. We repeated the procedure with similar results. Before we left, I grabbed Peter’s bat from behind the door. After a pause, I put it down and opened the closet to take his gun from the rack inside, along with cartridges from the drawer in the kitchen.

  Sitting on her haunches in the entryway, Sam watched in silence before following me out the door.

  She sprinted off into the bush, and I followed, gun in hand. We moved along the trail when her head lifted and every hair on her body stood on end.

  “Sam, wait.” But the red blur disappeared in the darkness. I cursed and raced after her, shoving my way through the tangle of branches as I moved off the trail.

  The night erupted with the sounds of a dogfight—snarling, snapping, crashing—somewhere ahead. I fought to push through the dense brush, growling in frustration. Conscious thought fled on the wave of anger that followed. I don’t remember dropping the gun, only the sound of ripping cloth as I shifted right through my clothes. I paused only to tear away the restriction of the jeans, the wulf erupting from me in the fastest complete change I’d ever done. My jaws parted and I roared a challenge to whoever dared to trespass.

  Dared to threaten my Sam.

  Ahead, the sounds altered from those of a fight to pursuit. The aroma of skunk was overpowering, but I caught traces of Sam’s distinct scent over it, laced with the smell of blood.

  Hers? Or the trespasser’s? The skunk smell was too strong, but I caught the merest wisp of wild wulf—wulfleng. Worry fed into my rage, and my lips pulled away from my teeth as I slipped past branches that would have slowed my human body. Riding the sudden surge of adrenaline, I raised my muzzle as I ran, and howled.

  The rough, wild sound of it startled me, and with a shiver of shock I realized I’d engaged in the one thing guaranteed to pump power to the wulf—hunting. Peter’s blue eyes, devoid of anything human, flashed into my mind, and the human side of me yanked back on the wulf.

  But the wulf fought back. My nostrils filled with Sam’s scent intermingled with that of blood, and the wulf battled like a razor-clawed inner demon, making me stagger into a tree.

  Sam. Alone and in pursuit of an unknown menace. The thought pushed through the battle, and the wulf yielded to the urgency that drove me. I picked myself up out of the dirt and ran on, the human once again in control. My mind raced as I tracked our location—I knew every inch of these woods. Whoever this guy was, he was headed for the road.

  I tapped into the power of my arms and took to the trees, swinging apelike through the swaying trunks and catching glimpses of a dark form ahead, pursued by a streak of russet. Sam’s wulf was small but agile and lightning quick, yet this guy stayed ahead of her, and once he found a deer trail and stretched out, he pulled away. This was no ordinary wulfleng. He had to be a mutant.

  No single wulfan, not even a certain fierce, redheaded enforcer could take on a mutant, and live. I redoubled my efforts, closing in on Sam.

  The sound of an engine rumbled through the bush as we drew near the end of the trail. I snarled and leaped through the remaining trees, crashing to the ground in the ditch. The wulfleng broke cover three hundred feet from me. I bounded toward him, but he had come through beside a car that was already in motion. As Sam burst through the bush almost on top of me, he launched onto the roof of the vehicle and clung. We gave chase, but the car accelerated. My wulf hands—the digits thick and strong, with pads beneath and long claws at the tips—left gouges in the back bumper before it disappeared in a cloud of choking dust.

  We stood in the center of the road, breathing hard. Sam growled and snapped at the air in frustration, then turned and nudged me with her nose. The movement became a caress as she pushed her panting muzzle beneath mine and held it there for a moment. The contact both satisfied something deep within and frightened the heck out of me. Blood. There was always blood associated with the change, some likely stained my fur. I yanked my face away from hers and headed back the way we’d come. She followed me, hugging the ditch until we found the deer trail. Noses to the ground, we tracked the wulfleng—or rather, his skunky scent—back toward home.

  I ran alongside her sleek form, our footpads hitting the forest floor with soft, rhythmic thumps. Our shoulders brushed as we ducked and swerved through the underbrush, aware of each other with a clarity that was almost painful, joined by scent and sound and sight. I experienced a bone-deep contentment that should have been out of place given the circumstances. This is how it could be, my traitorous mind insisted. This is right. My inner voice cared little for the truth of mutant viruses or cages or death.

  As we approached the house, Sam poked me with her nose. “Track whur he hus been.”

  I nodded and we split up, noses to the ground. Within an hour, we’d covered the bush all around the farm. He’d been everywhere, following our walking trails, moving through the bush as though familiarizing himself. I found my shredded clothes while Sam did a last circuit.

  Sam shifted back to human and watched as I did the same, giving a nod of relief when I did so without a hitch. I took a deep breath and averted my eyes from her naked form, focusing instead on retrieving my phone from my ruined jeans and pulling on the ripped tee shirt.

  “This entire thing is weird. He was standing there in the bush, almost as though he was waiting for us,” she said.

  My mind buzzed with confusion. Who was watching us? And why?

  I turned to her to voice my questions, but the sight of her, standing nude in the moonlight, wiped my mental slate clean. There followed a silly little interlude of eyebrow twitching and head gestures to decide who walked first along the trail. Eventually, she gave me the look, to which I sighed and yanked the remnants of my tee shirt as low as it would go, which wasn’t low enough, and preceded her back to the house.

  We’d gone about twenty feet when she cleared her throat and said, “This is a beautiful trail to take a midnight stroll on. Such . . . scenery.”

  I choked and almost turned, only catching myself at the last moment. “I aim to please,” I managed in a strangled tone.

  “Oh, I bet you do.” I detected a growl beneath her words.

  I paused at the top of the stairs. Sam brushed by me to collect her discarded clothes, and I kept my eyes averted with some effort. By the time we opened my door to an ecstatic Keen, my face flamed bright red. Clutching my phone and the last shreds of my dignity, I grabbed a bottle if the antiviral and marched straight past my wiggling dog to fetch new clothes, before vanishing into the bathroom.

  I dumped the liquid into the bathroom sink and washed my hands and face in it. I returned, fully dressed, to see Sam, jeans on but still naked from the waist up, removing a mug of tea from the microwave. Her shirt lay on the counter, as though she’d paused while dressing to make the tea. She grabbed the string and jiggled the bag in the cup as she handed it over. My eyes drifted since her movement had fascinating repercussions up her arm and to her . . .

  Cursing the wulfan nonchalance about nudity, I yanked my thoughts from the gutter and took the mug. “Please put your shirt on.”

  “Newbie,” she teased, but her smile trembled.

  “Sam,” I growled, keeping my eyes averted.

  A muscle jumped in her clamped jaw before she pulled on her shirt. I sipped the tea, but my brain fizzed with white-hot static until she’d yanked down the hem.

  Focus, Liam.

  But focus did not come easy. The mutant virus, Peter’s descent into madness, and my friends being in danger stretched my nerves to
their limits. It left me brittle and on edge, and very aware of the wulf lurking beneath the surface. And the wulf wanted Sam.

  He couldn’t have her. I was infected with something that could kill her. No way I was going to let that happen. I ripped my eyes from the bit of skin exposed at her waist and clutched the mug like a lifeline, trying to ignore Sam stepping close beside me.

  I moved away to hand her the second mug of tea that sat on the counter.

  She nodded her thanks. “The skunk thing is a wulfan trick, using a strong scent to mask your own.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought twice about it,” I admitted. “There are lots of skunks around, and they’re brave enough to come to the house.”

  She nodded. “Garrett and I spent a month smelling like cat piss on one of our surveillance missions.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can still smell it. Ugh. Anyway, I could tell where he’s been, but I wouldn’t be able to identify him. He was all over the place before we arrived.” Her brows lowered. “When I found him, he was just standing there. Like he was waiting for me. But he didn’t want to fight. He took off as soon as he could get away.”

  I remembered following her through the bush, my frustration and worry.

  “He was luring you to go after him?”

  She tilted her head. “Seemed so, yes. But why?” Her eyes flashed to mine. “Not me. You. He was luring you.”