The Werewolf Chasers (Book 3): Wolf Hunt 3 Read online

  So Ally had far more on her emotional plate than the usual concerns about boys and grades, but most of the latest drama came from her recent discovery that she too was a werewolf. Fun times! She'd caused George and Lou some major headaches in their last wacky adventure.

  Overall, though, she was doing fairly well. There was nobody her age in the compound, but she didn't have much time to be social anyway, since a couple of J.P.'s associates were training her to control what they called her "gift," apparently without irony. She was getting pretty good at it. The only time she transformed against her will was when she got into a state of intense distress. Considering that she was a teenaged girl who'd watched her mother's throat get slit and who was living in a compound with a group of adults she'd never met a few weeks ago, George was surprised it didn't happen more often.

  They would keep her in this room for about an hour. No big deal. They had reluctantly let George keep her company, since if she did transform before the hour was up, it was a slow enough process to allow time for George to run screaming out the door.

  "Doing okay?" George asked.

  "Yeah. Just thinking."

  "About what?"

  "Everything."

  "I was thinking about how I wished Eugene put more cream cheese on this bagel."

  "I don't want to become a werewolf soldier."

  "Has there been talk of turning you into a werewolf soldier?"

  "No," said Ally. "They say they're trying to make it so I can control my gift—which is a stupid word for it, by the way—and live a normal life. But why do they care? Why are they letting us stay here if they don't have an ulterior motive?"

  "Werewolf soldier isn't bad, as far as ulterior motives go."

  "I'm serious."

  "All I know about werewolves is how to kill them," said George. "And by that, I mean frantically chasing after them while the body count piles up and eventually somehow managing to sort of come out on top. These guys seem to know what they're doing. When you can control your transformations, we'll get the hell out of here, I promise."

  Ally smiled. "Together?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "I guess this means you're adopting me."

  "Eugene and I will raise you like our own. Seriously, I'm not going to let anything happen to you. This is temporary. And when we leave, I'm not gonna just put you at the mercy of the system. We'll figure something out."

  "Thanks. Sorry I'm a mess."

  "We're all messes. If I were a werewolf, they'd put me in this room a dozen times a day."

  "Oh, by the way, I'm glad you got rid of the full beard. It sucked."

  George chuckled. He'd experimented with letting it grow out, but had gone back to his usual mustache and goatee. There was lots of gray mixed in with the black now.

  "Any exciting plans for today?" he asked.

  "Training. Then more training. Then I might watch a movie with Wesley."

  "He's too old for you. Don't make me kick his ass."

  "He's never tried anything. He barely even talks."

  "Well, he's—"

  "He's legally an adult and I'm legally a minor, and if he does ever express a romantic interest in little ol' me, I'll rip his balls off. Then I'll give them to you to stir-fry or whatever cooking technique you're trying to perfect that day."

  "Not where I was going with that, but I approve."

  They finished their bagels. George had planned to wait out the rest of her hour with her, but there was a rap on the door and he saw J.P. through the Plexiglas window. J.P. gestured for him to come out.

  "Gotta go," George told Ally. "See you in a bit."

  "Thanks for keeping me company."

  "Anytime." George stood up, opened the door, and stepped out into the tile-floored hallway.

  "Is she doing all right?" J.P. asked as George shut the door behind him.

  "Yeah, yeah, she's fine. Can't expect her to be completely over it."

  "Nope. We're all extremely pleased with her progress."

  J.P. was the only person in the compound who was even close to George's height, though he was still about three inches short of George's six-foot-five. J.P. was handsome as fuck and spent a lot of his free time working out. George, though a strong guy, tended to be more "bulky" than "muscular."

  "So what's up?" George asked.

  J.P. grinned, revealing his perfect teeth. "Nice job blowing out all of those birthday candles last night."

  "Uh, thanks."

  "What did you wish for?"

  "If I tell you, it won't come true."

  "No, seriously, George. Tell me what you wished for."

  "I wished for Charlize Theron to be waiting in my bed when I got back. She wasn't."

  "Ah."

  "You seem weirdly disappointed by my wish."

  "I thought maybe you'd wished for something else."

  "Well, what happened is that I didn't actually believe that by successfully blowing out all forty-five candles I would be granted a magical wish, because if that were the case millions of little girls would have ponies and Charlize Theron would be in beds across the nation. So I amused myself in my own mind with my implausible wish, never thinking that I'd have to defend my choice to you."

  "I apologize," said J.P. "I just thought you might have wished to have your friend back."

  "Fuck you," said George. He clenched his fists, though he had no intention of actually punching anybody. "Don't you dare turn his death into a stupid birthday wish discussion."

  "That was really uncool of me. I'd planned out the way this conversation was going to go and I botched it. No offense intended. So let me set this up a different way, because I feel like it needs some preamble. How much do you miss Lou?"

  "Why?"

  "Answer the question."

  "How much do you think I miss him?"

  "Sorry, this is going horribly," said J.P. "I'm going to ask you to give me two minutes to play along and not be antagonistic. Can you do that for me, George?"

  "Sure."

  "You know that we collected the bodies of all the werewolves and their victims, right?"

  "Yes."

  "And you know that we've been keeping Lou in our makeshift morgue so that you could eventually give him a proper burial, right?"

  "Right."

  "Wrong."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "You promised to not be antagonistic."

  "Sorry," said George. "I thought the two minutes were up."

  "I'm not going to get into all of the science because I understand maybe four percent of it. However, one of our projects, in one of the rooms that you're not allowed to enter, has been trying to return your friend to you."

  George took a step back, to decrease the chances that he might indeed punch J.P. in the face. "You mean like a zombie?"

  "No, no, no. No rotting flesh or brain eating. No Monkey's Paw twist. I mean Lou Flynn, just the way you remember him. I mean that we're ready for the final step, and we need you there for it."

  "If this is a joke, I will shatter your jaw. Not just break it, shatter it."

  "That would be completely fair. So are you ready to see him?"

  "Yeah."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Reunion

  As George followed J.P. down a corridor he'd never seen, he tried to simply compartmentalize all of his thoughts about what was happening and focus on the act of putting one foot in front of the other. It wasn't working. He was freaking out.

  He knew that J.P. wasn't playing a practical joke. The guy was in great physical shape, but no way did he want to deal with a homicidally enraged George Orton, and pranks didn't seem to be his style. He believed what he was saying.

  George didn't let himself believe it.

  You didn't bring people back from the dead.

  Of course, if you'd asked him a couple of years ago if people could transform into wolves, he would've said, "Hell no. What kind of dumb shit are you talking about?" And once he accepted werewolves, wa
s it that difficult to accept the idea that Lou might be waiting for him?

  Yes. It was way too difficult. Lou was not alive. George refused to let himself think of that as a remote possibility for even a second.

  J.P. stopped in front of a metal door. "He's in there. Now, this is the part where I offer up a great big disclaimer. Lou is alive, but we haven't woken him up yet. We don't know what he'll remember or how he'll react. He might be fine, and he might try and rip his own skull open."

  "Pretty sure you can't do that to your own skull."

  "That wouldn't stop him from trying."

  "Fair enough."

  "That's why we need you there. We don't want him to open his eyes and see a couple of mad scientists hovering over him. We want him to see his friend. We want you to assure him that everything is all right."

  George nodded. "Okay, so what you're saying is that you've brought Lou back to life, but there's a chance he could be completely insane."

  "To be blunt, yes."

  "So what happens if he does try to crack open his skull?"

  "We'll drug him and take it from there."

  "Have you had to 'take it from there' before?"

  "Yes."

  "And...?"

  "And eventually we gave up. But we started working on Lou the day after he died. And we have you here. I'm cautiously optimistic."

  "May I ask why the hell I wasn't kept in the loop?"

  "I didn't want to give you false hope, I didn't want to answer questions, and I didn't want to keep giving updates. Are you ready to see him?"

  "I'm not sure."

  J.P smiled. "Come on. Let's do this."

  He opened the door. They walked into what looked like a room in an intensive care unit. The room was filled with flashing and beeping equipment and electronic displays. A woman in a white lab coat was messing with one of the machines. And in the center of the room, in a bed, lay Lou.

  He looked peaceful, as if asleep and having a pleasant dream.

  "He looks...good," said George. He felt like his legs were going to collapse beneath him and he was going to burst into tears and then hyperventilate and then perhaps black out, but he forced himself to remain stoic.

  "He does, doesn't he?" asked the woman. George was almost positive her name was Diane. He didn't see her around very much and they'd never had a one-on-one conversation. She walked over to the bed and ran her fingers over Lou's neck. "Look how well that healed. Even the scars aren't that bad."

  George had demanded to see Lou's body after they brought it into the compound. His neck, which had been intact when he died, had been ravaged by one of the werewolves. George didn't know if it had been Shane, Robyn, or Crabs, but since they were all dead, it hadn't mattered.

  "Did everything heal?" asked George, surprised that he could form words right now.

  "If you're asking if his hand grew back, sorry, no. The process involves healing but not regeneration. He lost the hand before his death, right?"

  "Yeah, a few months before that. A different werewolf bit it off."

  "So he's used to having it gone. It would probably be more jarring for him to wake up and find it back again. Did J.P. explain what's going to happen?"

  "Kind of."

  "I'm going to give Lou an injection. Very quickly after that, maybe ten seconds, he'll wake up. What we need from you is to be the first thing he sees, with a great big wide happy smile. Act like seeing him there is the most natural thing in the world. It's really important that he not think of himself as an unholy abomination. That's where the insanity sets in."

  "Got it."

  "We don't want to strap him down, because that's the kind of thing that scares people when they wake up. I can't promise he won't be violent. If he attacks you, feel free to defend yourself."

  "I understand."

  "This could be truly horrible," said Diane. "I hope J.P. made that clear to you. I don't want you thinking that you weren't given fair warning. Beyond that, I guess we'll just hope for the best. Are you ready?"

  "Not really. I could prepare for the next decade and not be ready. But I'm going to have you do it anyway."

  "May I add something?" asked J.P.

  "Sure," said George.

  "She said to have a great big wide happy smile. I've never seen you smile. I'm going to guess that it doesn't happen very often and that it's an unnerving sight. So have a facial expression that Lou would expect from you."

  George gave him the finger.

  "Stand by the bed," Diane told him. "I'll tilt his head so you're the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes."

  J.P. rolled one of the machines out of the way as George got into place. Diane tilted Lou's head toward him. This should have been horrifying and creepy, but Lou truly looked like he was just asleep. He looked healthy. Even his beard was neatly trimmed. It was almost enough to make George believe that his best friend's death had only happened in his imagination, and that Lou had simply been hiding out all this time.

  Diane pressed the plunger on the hypodermic needle to get the air bubbles out, then injected clear fluid into Lou's upper arm.

  George realized that he was trembling, and forced himself to stop.

  Lou opened his eyes.

  At first he opened them slowly, like somebody not quite ready to wake up to the sound of their alarm clock. Then his eyes widened, and he jerked his head back and forth.

  "Where am I?" he demanded.

  George gently patted his arm. "You're safe." Gently patting Lou's arm was not something George would ever do, and he hoped this didn't set off a warning bell inside of Lou's brain.

  But Lou seemed to calm down. "Was I in a coma?"

  George glanced over at J.P., who gave him a subtle nod. "Yeah."

  "For how long?"

  "About six weeks."

  "Oh." Lou thought about that. "I guess that's not so bad. It's hard to explain, but it feels like years. Like I should be waking up in a science fiction future or something."

  Lou sounded a little groggy, but not too much different from somebody who'd just woken up from a sound sleep. Definitely not like somebody who'd been in a coma or somebody who'd been dead.

  "Nope, just the six weeks," said George. "I've missed you."

  "You look like you're gonna cry."

  "Nah."

  "You really do."

  "So the hell what? You've been in a coma. I thought you might never come out. If I want to cry, I'll cry my ass off."

  Suddenly, Lou sat up. "Ally! Is she okay? What happened to her?"

  "She's totally fine. I'll bring her to see you."

  "Eugene?"

  "He's here, too."

  "What about the other were—" Lou stopped, as if deciding that he shouldn't say the word "werewolves" in front of the strangers in the room. "What about the others?"

  "All dead. I killed the shit out of them."

  "It's okay," said J.P., stepping forward. "We know all about the werewolves. You're not in a hospital. You're in a small aboveground compound in Georgia. You're safe."

  "What's the last thing you remember?" George asked.

  "We were in a van. There was a werewolf on the roof. I told you that I wasn't going to die on you. Then I woke up here."

  "You remember everything, then."

  "I guess so. Stop crying."

  "I'm not crying."

  "There are tears flowing down your cheeks. Not big tears, but still."

  "It's probably time for you to go, George," said J.P. "Your friend needs his rest."

  "I've been in a coma for six weeks," said Lou. "I think I'm caught up on my sleep for a while."

  "What I meant was that we have a bunch of tests to run, but I thought 'your friend needs his rest' sounded less intimidating."

  "Oh, I don't care about tests," said Lou. "Jab me with anything."

  "I'll be back soon," George told him. "Don't be a pain in the ass."

  "I'll be a model patient. I'm just happy to not be dead."

  George and J
.P. left the room. As soon as they closed the door behind them, George lost his balance and dropped to his knees. He could barely breathe. Lou was back!

  He didn't even care if J.P. watched him cry. He'd completely earned the right to be emotional.

  But he wasn't emotional very long. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and stood up.

  "He seems pretty good," said George.

  "He does indeed. I'm very pleased."

  "Can he walk and stuff?"

  "Yes. There's no atrophy or anything. This was obviously an unnatural process, so he won't be suffering the impact that a normal person would if they'd been lying motionless for a month and a half. Physically, he should be totally fine."

  "He sure seems fine mentally."

  "We'll run a whole slew of cognitive tests, but yes, that initial conversation went extremely well. At some point soon we'll have to tell him that he died. That conversation might not go as well."

  "Why tell him?" George asked. "If he thinks he was in a coma, why shatter the illusion?"

  "Because he might suddenly remember his actual moment of death. If that happens, he'll be much better off if he understands the full context."

  "Fair enough."

  "Anyway, congratulations, you've got your friend back."

  "Thanks. Thanks for bringing him back. I mean that."

  J.P. grinned. "I'd say 'anytime,' but that's obviously not practical."

  "I think I'm going to head back to my room and lie down for a while. Try to process everything."

  "That sounds like a good idea."

  "One more question before I go. You seemed pretty confident that this would all work out. You've done this before, right?"

  "Yes. One other success before this. We worked out all the kinks."

  "How long ago was the last one?"

  "Recent."

  "Anybody I know?"

  J.P. didn't answer.

  George frowned. "I was just kidding. Was it somebody I know?"

  "We'll discuss this later. There are only so many surprises you can handle at once. Go back to your room, relax, do some deep thinking, and we'll regroup later."