In the Woods Read online

  "They're in the garage freezer." But she made no move away from him. Her palms were pushing up and down his middle, roving lower with each pass until he was groaning.

  "Maybe I should go out there with you," he suggested in a passion-rough voice.

  Coyly, Elizabeth pushed back, her manner all tease and temptation. "Oh, no. You stay here and entertain our guests. I'll let you entertain me later."

  He held onto her hips, tugging her toward him. "Are you sure you can wait?"

  "No." Arousal made her laugh breathy. "But I'll just have to."Then her tone grew serious. "I like them, Larry. I hope they can work things out and put all this stuff behind them."

  He sighed into her pale blonde hair. "Me, too. Sometimes, it takes rough times to pull two people back together."

  "Well, they certainly have those. You know who they remind me of?"

  "Who?" He was nuzzling her ear, distracting her with the hot caress of his breath.

  "Us. Remember? When we were just starting out?"

  "Oh, the fights we had!"

  "I don't remember them as well as I remember the making up after."

  They kissed, long, leisurely, wetly, like newlyweds instead of an old married couple, until Elizabeth pushed away again to protest faintly, "Our guests, remember?"

  "If they're smart, they'll be making out in the living room as we speak."

  "Maybe you'd better go interrupt them. It's better if you have to wait for it."

  Larry groaned meaningfully.

  Patting his cheek, Elizabeth said, "I'll grab a pint of ice cream, too."

  "For later?"

  "For dessert."

  Larry's grin was wicked. "That's what I meant."

  "Naughty boy," she scolded, heading for the door. She was grinning, too.

  "The big bad wolf.” He gave his impression of a howl and winked. “If I remember right, that's what attracted you to me in the first place."

  She stopped at the door, smiling back over her shoulder. "No it wasn't. It was the way you handled yourself in that old Mustang of yours."

  "You mean my driving?"

  "No, I mean your parking."

  His booming laugh followed her outside as she started along the stone walk. Elizabeth began whistling Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay", the soulful ballad that had been crooning from the Mustang's radio when Larry scored his first home run in the tiny back seat. She broke off in mid-chorus and hesitated, half way between the house and the garage, listening.

  The front of the house was well lit by recessed spot lights but where she moved down the walk, her stride brisk and bouncy with good humor, shadows stretched long and deep. The woods in back were an indistinguishable solid, black as the void of a different dimension.She thought she'd heard something, some faint discord in the sweet night music whispering around her. She waited, hairs stirring along her arms in crawly ripples, breath catching so the silence was complete.

  Nothing.

  Just the rustle of the trees upon the air carrying the pleasant scent of their living room fire and the loamy odor of new grass. Less pleasant was the smell from their neighbor's garbage can, redolent of that morning's catch from opening day of the bass fishing season.

  Larry had grumbled about it over breakfast. He always took that Saturday off before the long Memorial weekend so he could be on the water at 4:30 waiting for daybreak and the big lunkers who'd had all winter to fatten up to trophy size. This year, he couldn't, his input too valuable on this serial killer thing. Nor, she supposed, would he have wanted to indulge in spare time entertainment when citizens of their community could be out there dying.

  That was Larry, the man she loved.

  Convinced she'd imagined whatever she thought she'd heard, Elizabeth continued on. She'd gone three steps when the sound came again, a definite crunch of movement from the darkness behind the garage. The stench of the fish guts was stronger. She assumed it was some stray animal coaxed out of the woods by the promise of supper.

  She was right.

  Elizabeth was reaching for the door knob to the garage service entrance when the sensation of rapid movement rushed up behind her.She began to turn, thinking it was Larry, come to seduce her on top of the chest freezer. She was smiling as she glanced around.

  The gesture froze on her face as she was struck by a gamey smell and a blast of fetid breath a fraction of a second before a dark shape lunged at her, hitting with enough force to knock her to the ground.

  Driving the scream from her lungs.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Larry paused in the archway leading to the living room. While he wasn't intruding upon something hotly intimate, it was obviously the site of some rapidly mending fences. Alex and Helen sat side by side on the sofa, hands entwined, gazes locked in tender study.Larry cleared his throat as he advanced, then grinned. The two lovebirds jumped apart like teenagers surprised by their chaperon.

  "How's it going?" His grin infected his tone.

  "Fine," Helen answered for them both, her arm curving about her husband's middle for a possessive show of unity.

  "Great. That's just great. How does filet done to perfection, an impertinent little red wine and greens on the side sound to you guys?"

  Alex smiled, finally losing some of the edgy tension that had haunted him for days. "Sounds good." It sounded great! Almost too good to be true. "You're sure we're not putting you to any trouble?"

  "Hey, a man's gotta eat. And we always welcome good company."

  Helen returned his genuine assertion with one of her own. "You don't know how much we appreciate this."

  "Yeah," Alex echoed. "Thanks, Larry."

  "For what?"

  "For inviting us ov—"

  Something crashed into the back door. They all jumped, startled by the sudden noise, probably more so because their recent topics of conversation left them more than a little spooked.

  Larry frowned slightly and headed toward the kitchen at a jog, shouting, "Don't break down the door, woman! I'll be right there!"

  The couple on the couch had time to exchange glances, followed by tentative smiles. Love simmered like a spicy potpourri on slow burn.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The sound of Larry's scream brought them both to their feet.

  "Elizabeth! Noooo!"

  Larry burst into the living room, his features pale and almost skeletal with the tautness of mad terror. Breaths sobbing from him, he ignored his guests to stumble to a small decorative table where ivy trailed to the carpet in graceful tendrils. Vase and plant smashed to the floor as Larry wrenched open a slender drawer. He whirled toward the kitchen, revolver gleaming black and deadly in his palm.Clutching at each other, Alex and Helen followed his now frighteningly calm stare to where it fixed upon the arch leading to the kitchen.

  The serial killer! flashed into Helen's mind.

  That monster from the woods! punched through Alex's conscious thoughts like a galvanized rod.

  Both of them were right about the danger, wrong about the source.

  From the kitchen, coming slowly, purposefully around the corner, was something monstrous, something too unbelievable to be real.

  Something too horrible to be anything but real.

  Alex recognized it immediately. He'd seen the lurid glare before, shining like crazed beacons from empty sockets in a skull.But over those smooth time-worn bones, some fantastical process had laid muscle and flesh and fur. And teeth. Huge, razor-sharp teeth.

  Teeth sunk into the torso of Elizabeth Gorham.

  Alex was reminded briefly, hysterically, of the android torn in half by the Mother Alien at the end of the second in the series by that name. Only instead of viscous fluid and rubbery cables, the upper half of Elizabeth's body dripped streaks of bloody gore and leaked entrails from parquet squares to plush beige Berber carpeting.

  Beside him, Helen began shrieking with a chilling lunacy.

  Larry, all focu
sed professional despite the fact that his dear wife dangled from the creature's jaws with a look of utter surprise still etched on her lovely, lifeless features, pointed his gun and fired.

  Plaster exploded from the wall next to the mammoth four-legged beast, opening a hole into the dining room big enough to pass dinner plates through.

  Composure fracturing, Larry fired again.

  This time the round hit the creature—they had no name for the mix of wolf and razorback times three in size. As the bullet tore into the muscular bulge of one shoulder, it let out a deafening roar, dropping what was left of Elizabeth onto the rug. She laid there, eyes glazed, like the upper portion of a rag doll rent in two. Except no rag doll was so viscerally correct.

  The beast crossed the living room in a single lunge, slamming into Larry before he could get off another shot. Its jaws opened insanely wide, snapping shut on the police detective's chest, splintering through his rib cage like a gigantic seafood cracker.

  At the sight of spilling intestines, Helen shrieks grew hoarse and thready. As a stunned Alex gripped her by the shoulders and tried to turn her toward the front door exit, she pulled from him in a panicked confusion, reeling blindly away from, instead of toward safety.

  Even as Alex shouted out a helpless warning, the monstrous doglike demon spotted her frantic movements and was on her with a killer's instinct. Somehow, she managed to dodge its initial leap, stumbling, skidding on the dense Berber carpet like a quarterback evading a sack.

  "Helen! This way!"

  Alex vaulted the couch and wrested the heavy front door open, providing a clear destination for his fear-driven wife. As she streaked toward it, Alex rounded the sofa again to snatch one of the brass tools from the fireside. He rushed the creature, which was closer to a bull in size than a domestic shepherd, and brought the poker down upon its bristly hunches with all his might.

  The blow didn't faze it, even though reverberations numbed Alex’s arms.

  She almost made it.

  Within a long stride of the threshold, Helen was struck from behind. Screams tore from her raw vocal chords as she fell hard, unable to catch herself because the giant demon dog had her elbow in its crushing grip. Frantically, she twisted, pummeling the creature's horned snout with her other fist, trying to cry out for Alex, but unable to make more than pathetic croaking sounds that ended when the beast ground down with a crunch of bone. Her sudden silence echoed more loudly than the shrieks.

  Screaming madly, Alex lunged at the creature, pounding on its massive back in an attempt to turn its attention from his wife. With one toss of its shaggy head, the hellhound sent Alex airborne to smash through a coffee table in his awkward descent.

  For a moment, he lay there, dazed within the casing of shattered fine wood.

  Helen!

  From his ungainly position, he could just make out the sole of her unmoving foot.

  Then a blast of scorching breath steamed against his face. He found himself gazing up into the gleaming eyes of the monster.Body aching from his fall, trapped within the cage the table made about him, will broken by the horrendous sight of two gruesome deaths and his wife's mauling, Alex could do little in his own defense except brace for dying.

  But the beast just stood there, fixed glare pinning Alex were he lay.

  Then with a rumbling snarl, the devil dog padded over to the eviscerated form of Larry Gorham, clamping its jaw shut on one limp arm, worrying it free with a rip of cloth and tear of flesh and tendons.

  And then it brought the severed limb across the room, presenting it to Alex like a prize.

  It was all he could do not to shriek when the detached arm thumped into his lap.

  Once its gift was deposited, the beast lifted its huge head to snort the air in great noisy drafts. Growling low in its thick throat, it trotted back to the kitchen leaving carnage in its wake."Helen!"

  Alex fought his way free of the table's shell, thrusting the grisly arm from him. Half crawling, half running, he went to his wife's side.

  It was bad. Alex felt for a pulse with trembling fingers, casting an anxious look toward the kitchen as he waited for that fluttery beat to assure him that his wife was alive. He could tell in a glance that she was in danger of losing the arm if she didn't bleed to death first. Desperate to prevent both things, he tore the sleeve from his own shirt to bind the site of the terrible lacerations. He couldn't tell how much bone and muscle damage had been done. Quickly, he used the other sleeve to fashion a tourniquet. Then he took a moment to just observe her.

  Her face was devoid of color, of life. Lips that had enjoined his with such passion were still and ashen. But she was alive. He knew she was strong, recalling how she'd struck back at her attacker with such courage and will to survive.

  Softly, she moaned.

  And that was all it took to shake Alex into action. A sliver of professionalism stabbed through the terror, providing enough clear vision to prompt his response, elevating him above the horror strewn all about him.

  Stepping over Larry's desecrated body, he found the phone and dialed 911, muttering, "Hang on, baby. Help's coming. Don't leave me again, Helen. I won't let you go."

  The sound of a competent voice on the other end of the line brought him back to the task at hand.

  "Send an ambulance. My wife's been attacked by an animal. She's sustained severe blood loss . . .I don't know. Trace the line!"

  And distractedly, he set the receiver down on the blood-soaked rug without breaking the connection.

  Slowly, he sank down in a cross legged position, holding his wife's head in his lap. His hand stroked in even repetitions over her hair, his mind empty of all but her. They would have their chance together. They would! He refused to believe otherwise. Even as the bodies of two who'd believed the same thing cooled within feet of him.

  He heard sirens wailing in the distance.

  "Help's here, Helen. You're going to be all right, you hear?You're going to be all right."

  Gently, he slipped out from under her and crossed unsteadily to the couch to pull the once neatly arranged square shawl off its back to drape over his wife's limp body in a warming cover. Then he stood looking down at her for a long moment as the scream of sirens grew closer, louder. That gaze turned to survey the two other bodies in the room, knowing there was no help for either of them.

  Awareness of his situation seeped back into his dulled mind like a sluice of ice water, startling his brain, kick-starting his wits.

  What the hell was he going to say happened when the police got there?

  That some big devil dog decided to have his hosts for an evening buffet? Some demon unearthed from a crude grave in the woods that somehow manifested from naked bone into hundreds of pounds of naked evil? Oh, yeah, like they'd believe that. And while they doubted, while they most likely locked him away in some loony bin, the killings would continue. He knew that with a grim certainty. Unless he could do something about it. He, unlike the police, knew what they were dealing with and it had nothing to do with some flesh and blood serial killer.

  They were facing a monster.

  And he was going to have to do something about it, with or without the help of the City’s finest. But he couldn’t do it from inside a jail cell.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he began to back from the room, stooping first to pick up Larry's revolver. The sirens were shrieking now, blocks away. There was no more time for hesitation.

  With one last look at Helen's pale features, he murmured, “I’ll be back, baby, as soon as I take care of things.”

  Then Alex darted out the door.

  ӜӜӜ

  "Jeeshus!" Connor Pellman groaned as he stepped past a brace of uniformed officers to enter his chief detective’s blood-drenched living room. The bodies of Gorham and his wife were mere contours beneath white sheets, one half the length of the other. He'd passed the ambulance bearing Helen Kerwood to the hospital as he’d turned onto the street.

  His first instinct was to bark at the officers, "
No press! No pictures. No one talks to anybody about what they've seen here. If this gets out, I'm holding you two personally responsible."

  Just like the ruthless media was going to hold him responsible.

  Could this situation get any worse?

  Officer Oldman stepped up beside him to point to a circle of blood near the door.

  “That’s where they found Helen Kerwood. The medics said she had a tourniquet on her arm.”

  “What?”

  “Kerwood must have put it there before he made the call.”

  Funny, but that didn’t sound like the work of a crazed killer to him. Why would he tear everyone up then take the time to call the EMTs and put a lifesaving tourniquet on one of his victims? It didn’t make sense. Nothing about this whole case made sense. Especially the evidence they’d found tracked in blood.

  “Another thing, we’ve got animal prints everywhere, some big sucker, but we lost the bloody things halfway across the yard. They just disappear.”

  Pellman glowered at him in irritation. “What about the dogs?I thought we had K-9 in on this?”

  “That I don’t get. Every time we put them on the scent, they yelp and friggin’ run away . . . like they’re scared or something.”

  That’s not the news Pellman wanted to hear. “Not even the damned dogs can do their jobs right. I want someone with the Kerwood woman.The minute she regains consciousness, I want to know what happened here.”

  A nightmare. A nightmare is what had happened. Glancing around, he had to wonder how one man could exact such savagery. What could have pushed an average, decent guy beyond the brink to do such things to a wife he claimed to love, to people who were trying to help him?Pellman had no explanation except that Kerwood was just plain clinically nuts.

  Pathologist Anne Goodnight entered through the dining room arch, next to a hole that had been blown clear through the wall. She was peeling down her examining gloves, her features stiff and stoic.

  "Nasty mess," she commented. "Damn shame."