Wolf Song |✅

Chapter 11

"And Durgapur is...?"

"In India," he smiled.

"Oh. So...what are you doing here? In Fresno, I mean?"

She watched the Adam's apple bob up and down on his long slender throat as he swallowed. He waited until they had turned a corner before answering, "My dad was a hunter. A good one. He dragged my sister and I all over Europe and eventually to America. As time passed we eventually made our way to California. My dad met Luke, became mates, and eventually I started working with him."

"What about your sister?"

"When my sister turned eighteen she left and eventually settled down with a man. I think she has a baby now, I get letters every so often. She didn't come to our dad's funeral."

Zoë opened her mouth to offer her condolences but Farrell shot her a smile, "Don't worry, it was a long time ago, and he was an ass."

As they reached the scrapyard the van came to a puttering stop. Farrell got out and opened the chainlink gate, interwoven with green plastic, and got back in the van. She looked out the window as they drove up to the little house on the other side of the yard. She hadn't had much incentive to look around the last time she'd been here, she'd been too high-strung. But she'd never imagined that the clean, quiet man who so often sat in her lobby lived in a place like this. Useless scrap covered the yard. There were cars, and appliances, and all manner of other metal scrap she could and could not identify. The smell of oil, beer, and dead earth was stag­gering.

Farrell gave her a brief smile and pushed his glasses back up his nose as the van came to a clunky, shuttering halt. They piled out and Zoë looked at the little house. It was squat and in disrepair, painted a faded, ugly shade of yellow with white trim, making the whole thing look like a giant, run down Twinkie.

Farrell led her inside and called for Luke. Zoë stood by the door and looked around the little living room. Books and books that lined his walls, piled themselves on the floors, in corners, and covered desks. Each of them was old, worn, and bound in leather dyed black, red or green. Some were big, some were small, but they were all ancient, and it made the living room smell like a used bookstore.

She couldn't help but think Luke's living room looked like some kind of medieval library that just happened to have a crappy sofa and TV.

"You made it," came a pleasant voice. Zoë looked up to see Luke coming out of a back room, his heavy boots thudding against the hardwood floor. He wore a grey, long sleeved shirt and dark jeans, his hair neatly combed, and he looked like he'd shaved earlier that day. Zoë gave him a look, "You sure do have a lot of books," she commented; the understatement of the year.

He gave an almost embarrassed laugh, "Yeeeeaaah," he said, drawing the word out. "Anyway, these are more for reference. The big guns are down stairs."

He led her to the back of the house and opened a heavy door that led to pitch blackness. The smell of cold cement fluttered on the air, and Zoë could almost feel a barrier as the temperature changed noticeably between the rest of the house and the door­way. Luke reached a hand in and turned on a light that illuminated an iron stairwell leading downwards into some kind of basement or cellar. Zoë looked at Luke, "Is this the part where you lure me down into the basement and handcuff me to the pipes?"

Luke gave a small, throaty chuckle and smirked down at her, "I guess if you're into that sort of thing..."

She gave a girlish giggle and followed him down the steps. The stairwell wasn't long, but their footfalls on the aged metal echoed off the concrete walls, making it sound like there were ten of them. When at last they stood at the bottom, Luke flipped another light and the room seemed to burst into life. Zoë had to blink, but when at last her eyes stopped stinging she opened them and looked around.

The basement was more like a fallout shelter. Iron shelves lined the walls filled with tarps, large bags of rock salt, boxes and boxes of ammunition, a few trunks, even more books, several sawed off single-bolt-action and double-barrel shotguns, and every pointy or edged weapon you could imagine—swords, throwing knives, axes, katanas, daggers, and so on. Each of them was tipped in gleaming silver that made the wall look like a disco ball.

"You know, when you said the big guns were down here, I thought you were being figurative," Zoë said giving Luke a sidelong glance. "Why so much silver?"

Luke picked up a dagger off the wall and twirled it lazily in his hand as he spoke, "When Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans, his reward was thirty pieces of silver. Since then, God has cursed man to suffer no wicked thing, and made silver his weapon against the forces of darkness."

"I don't know about all that bullshit, but it sure does hurt the bastards," came a voice from behind them. Zoë turned to see a man coming down the stairs. He was tall and angular with a pointed nose, high forehead and thin lips. His short black hair was styled into a faux-hawk, his bangs bleached orange, and he wore a white shirt under dark flannel, worn jeans, and black CT's. Square, rose-colored glasses shielded his eyes making his eye-color impossible to determine.

Zoë's brow furrowed, "Who are you?" she asked.

"Name's Switch."

"Switch?" Zoë repeated skeptically. What a stupid name.

The guy shrugged a single shoulder. Luke folded his arms. "Switch does most of the research around here."

"I just do some internet browsing. Look for any weird things go­ing on in the Valley, sometimes we find something out of state," Switch said nonchalantly.

Zoë gave Switch another cursory glance and nodded, then turned her attention to the rest of the room. "So...this is how you kill them? The monsters?" she said. It sounded a little odd. Luke watched her as she walked around the room, examining things. "Not always," he told her, "Some things can be killed in the same way a human can; others you have to use special items, or take them down a certain way."

"Mostly it just takes the right type of ammo, but once in a while we get the occasional silver blade, dead man's blood, holy water, blah, blah, blah," Switch added.

Zoë licked her lips. She didn't know what she had expected, but it certainly wasn't this. Zoë took a deep breath, chewing her bot­tom lip as she shifted her weight uneasily. She could feel Luke and Switch watching her, waiting.

Damn, this is a lot bigger than I expected.

But she couldn't balk now. There was too much at stake. She took a deep breath and looked up at Luke. "Okay," she said. "So...guns, knives. What else is there?"

Luke winked, "Come meet the team," he said. The three of them made their way up the stairs and back out into Luke's living room where Farrell was talking to a man in a police uniform. He looked up when he saw Zoë and smiled, "Oh, you must be Zoë," he said in a voice that was kind, yet firm, "Farrell was just telling me about you," he said.

"'Sup," Zoë said easily. The man held his hand out to greet her and she took it. She appreciated that had had a firm handshake, even when dealing with a woman. So many people expected her to have a wimpy handshake that they always gave her what she called "fish hand"—a handshake so weak it felt like she was holding a dead fish.

"I'm Damien," he said, "Nice to meet you." Zoë met his eyes and noticed their green depths. Something clicked in the back of her mind and she realized he was the man that had shot Gavin in the park last month. The one who killed him.

"Likewise," Zoë said, her mouth suddenly dry.

Lukeput a hand on Zoë's shoulder and laughed, "Welcome to the family."