And the Wolves

--This is a short story that goes along with the "How to Kill" series of stories, featured on this site--

--This is also the LAST chapter in the "How to Kill" series; it's been a fun ride!--

I was supervising cleanup of the USS Tigerlily in the Sargasso Sea when I was informed via radio of the Carne Organization's newest client, an American plantation owner in northern Argentina. The owner, one J. Dillon, was requesting a consultation regarding the disappearance of his cattle and gauchos. Dillon placed the blame on the "chupacabra", a laughable creature even to this cryptologist. Nevertheless, he put up all necessary cash for the investigation and I dutifully boarded a ship for South America.

Arriving in Buenos Aires I stopped at the local Carne Bureau and requistioned a Thompson submachine gun and several 100 round drums. I drew out a M1911 .45 and one BMW R35 dressed with a holster for the Tommy gun and leather riding bags. It was several hours through soft, wet roads into the Formosa province and I spent nearly two hours trying to find a road into the Dillon ranch once I confirmed its location.

On the ride in I noticed some perculiarites. Firstly, the bodies of cattle were dragged to the road and left there to rot. Stopping the bike and examining the carcasses at a close distance I discovered all of them, without exception, had died by biting and slash wounds. The chupacabra's modus operandi was vampiric: a small bite which slowly drained the body of all its blood. It was plainly obvious here that the cattle were not killed for their blood or even perhaps for sustenance. I marked that our most likely culprit was a fast moving creature, weighing somewhere over 14 stone, possessing incredible strength and viciousness but a certain lack of purpose. I was examining, in short, the work of a werewolf.

I was waved into a detached garage where I parked my motorbike and escorted by a prim, bushy-eyed man into the manor proper, a fabulously built Tudor-style house of three apparent floors and almost two dozen windows facing out into the grounds above the front door. This half-timbered monument to Dillon's wealth appeared sinister against the dark flashes of lightening in the distance. A light rain began to fall as the waitingman escorted me to the front door and, pausing for ceremony, opened it for me.

The house felt oddly constraining and tight, the walls adorned with ancient-looking landscapes and the detritus of what seemed to be oil-drilling equipment. Occasionally I could make out a cob-web, it appeared that my client's obvious wealth did not translate into cleanliness by any means. I was shown to a small but well-furnished room with a rolltop desk and a canopied bed and told dinner would be served shortly.

Dillon met me at a massive and unnecessarily-long mahogany dining table in an ill-lit and musty corner of the house. He was a frail looking man with a long, pale face and bruises along his wrists and a healing scar just below his lower lip. He apologized for his appearance-citing a cut obtained while shaving and the intensity of the grieving widow of one of his gauchos- and asked me to sit. I obeyed.

His summary of the case presented me with little I didn't already know. He explained that all of the deaths occurred while he was asleep in the master bedroom or working in his study. He didn't supervise the day-to-day operations of the ranch, leaving that to a foreman named Talavera, but did consider all of his employees children of his, in a way. They all lived on the ranch and he offered them free room and board so long as their work remained satisfactory and provided they voted as he directed in local elections. I broached rather tentatively the topic of werewolves and he swiftly shot it down, replying that the murders had occurred on nights where the moon was new, or waning. I did not think it prudent to tell him that the "full moon" aspect of werecreatures was a polite fiction.

The meal was a delicious rare steak (I noticed with some curiosity that my host took his steak blue) and well-prepared bake potatoes. I ate well, having built up a hunger from my cross-country travel, and took brandy with my host in his study.

"I spent most of my young life interested in the Occult. I confess I am deeply jealous of your career, Mr. Stanton."

I asked him what precluded his work in the field.

"A jealous father."

He left it at that. I felt I had struck a strong nerve and shortly thereafter excused myself for bed.

That night I awoke to the sound of howling. I swore- certain my host to be its source- and dressed quickly. I made my way into the garage, drew the Thompson out of its holster, and walked out into the plains.

It was a sultry black night, and though the rain had stopped, a strong fog covered the green and yellow grass under my feet. I could see only about ten feet in front of me in all directions and regretted instantly that I had not brought any silver rounds. I wouldn't be able to kill the creature in its current state, but I could certainly wound it, and once wounded, it could be trapped. I could hear the howling again, this time closer, and I started towards that direction, chambering a round. It was a tense few moments before I heard a growl to my right.

I spun, and fired into the darkness. The creature yelped and moved forward. I took it in. It was a black, feral looking wolf, streaked with white and red. Its eyes were a fierce and wild yellow, and it stalked forward with a deliberate anger. I fired a short burst- only three rounds- and the creature jumped, recoiling from the bullets. It then turned and limped off. I fired after it, but after a long watch spent alone on the fields I heard no more howling.

Once the sun rose I demanded to see Dillon. He appeared almost immediately, dressed in a three piece suit and wearing a fedora, smoking a pipe. I was stunned to see him apparently unwounded. In all of my studies I had never heard of a werewolf healing this quickly. My assumption was false, and, perhaps out of bitterness, I questioned the man about his whereabouts nonetheless. He had awoken last night to the sound of gunfire, and, too nervous to investigate in his infirm and elderly state spent the rest of the night reading. His account was completely believable and left me frustrated and embarrassed. I spent the day asking for proper silverware, filing bits of the metal off of forks and knives and coating the inside of the barrel of the Thompson with them. At best, the first ten or so rounds would possess minute amounts of silver, after that the work would be decidedly less simple.

"Precisely how much have you achieved since shooting up my ranch last night, Mr. Stanton?"

I replied that I was whittling down a list of suspects and could at the very least confirm it was a werewolf.

"And now you've ruined a perfectly good set of silverware in order to slay this beast, eh? I suppose when all is said and done I will be left with a corpse riddled with bullets and your assertion that the problem is dealt with."

I offered that if my service was unsatisfactory he could always enlist the help of another organization. Perhaps the government would take an interest in the murders.

"Now now, no one need be hostile here. I was only ensuring your authenticity, and it has been proved to me."

That night I swallowed two capsules of amphetamines and, riding my bike into the fields, and waited.

The pleasant feeling of acuity and awareness the drugs gave me, along with the security and speed the bike afforded me swelled up in me as I waited. It was a few disappointing hours in the fog later that I heard the first howl. I started the bike up and drove in its direction.

I passed by a tattered suit. I heard the shouts in Spanish of gauchos as I came near a rundown shack next to a long running divot in the field. I parked the bike on the lip of the divot and carried the gun towards the shack. Inside I could hear a man speaking with calm authority and knew him to be the foreman, Talavera. I kicked open the door and found inside an unspeakable horror.

Chained to stakes driven in the dirt floor were two children, one of whom had been grievously wounded. They were babbling incoherently as fur began to sprout up along their skin. Chained down in the corner in a similar manner was a full-grown man (I did not recognize him as the waitingman who had led me into the mansion immediately), nude and shivering, his teeth already beginning to spike out in the form of fangs. In front of them, bearing a Remington pump shotgun, was Talavera. He identified himself to me in broken English and told me in his native tongue that it was not my business to deal with these people. He noted with sadness that the children were his, and that the waitingman was his brother.

"And the wolves?" I asked.

"I can keep them at bay."

I could barely contain my disgust and horror at the fact that I had nearly shot and killed a child. At the same time I knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that Talavera was a poor keeper of these things and that any chance of remedy for them was long gone.

I explained this to him while their transformation became more plain. Their ears began to perk up, their eyes shifting and widening out. Paws and forelimbs became discernible. I wouldn't wish the sight on any father.

I raised my weapon as they began to bark in rage. He leveled the shotgun at me and took a protective step backwards towards his children- too far backwards- and one of them took a deep piece out of his calf. He screamed and fell to his knees and the wounded one began to feed on the tender part of his back. Soon he was barely alive, the gun discarded on the floor.

It was difficult, but I killed the waitingman and the (relatively) healthy child. The wounded one, however, I had special plans for.

It barked and snapped at me when I came close, looking up from its paternal meal. I swung the butt of the Thompson and rendered it unconscious, I then bound its jaw and tied up its forepaws.

I hitched it in an ungainly manner along the back of my bike and drove the short distance to the manor. I carried it uncomfortably into the house and up to the master bedroom. I entered without knocking, dragging the creature in behind me. Dillon awoke with a start and let out a feminine wail. I fired a round into the ceiling and the beast awoke, roaring in rage.

"Is this proof enough of my authenticity?" I asked him.

He began to jabber insults and half-hearted threats. I responded to this by dragging the creature (who tried but failed to get a piece out of my arm) closer to the bed.

"Yes! Yes!" he pleaded. I drew a chair from his desk and sat, legs crossed, for the next three hours till dawn.

That morning the wolf reverted. Dillon was crowing is agony but unable to rise out of bed. A shy, brown-haired girl, suffering from many gunshot wounds, bound by the mouth, hands, and feet, looked up at us. I handed him the .45 and enjoined him to become an expert in the field of the paranormal. It was only after much protesting that he fired the gun.

I told him his bill would be forthcoming, and that he would be recompensed for his silverware. I gassed up the bike and drove back to Buenos Aires.