“Marc! Where are you, Marc?” Steve cried.
“Over here! I’m over here!” Marc shouted back into the darkness.
I glanced over my shoulder and could see Steve’s torchlight heading towards us at speed.
“I said, shut the fuck up!” I hissed at Marc again.
He ignored me and howled again, “Steve!
Over here, Steve!”
Steve was very close now, so I forced Marc down into the undergrowth. I lay on top of him, and in the dark I felt for his mouth with my hand. Once I had located it, I forced the barrel of my gun between his teeth. I put my cheek next to his and whispered into his ear.
“You don’t hear too well. One more word out of you…so much as a murmur, and you won’t believe what happens next. I’ll execute you and your fucking brother. Do I make myself clear?”
Marc nodded very slowly, not out of obstinacy, but out of fear that if he moved too suddenly, my gun might have gone off in his mouth.
So we lay there, me on top of him as his brother approached, the light from his torch bouncing off the trees around us. He came to a halt only a few feet from where we lay. I tried not to breathe, not to make a sound. I pushed the barrel of the gun further into Marc’s mouth. He stayed quiet. The thought of trying to fly away came into my mind - but I would have to remove my jacket, fold my shirt and take the gun out of Marc’s mouth while doing all of that. I couldn’t risk it.
“Marc! Marc! Where are you? Call to me, buddy!” Steve shouted into the silent night.
The light from his torch bounced around again and for a moment, it lit up the ground only inches from my face. I readied myself for the moment that his light fell directly on us, but it never did. He stood there for a few moments longer, and then headed off at speed in the opposite direction.
I continued to lie on top of Marc, my gun rammed into his mouth until I felt that Steve was far enough away.
“C’mon, get up,” I whispered into his ear.
I pulled him to his feet and kept my gun tightly between his teeth, my other hand pulling him along by his shoulder. Our progress was slow, but I daren’t risk putting on my torch. I guessed that Steve was some way behind us, but it was dark so I couldn’t be sure.
I continued to shove Marc forward as quietly as possible but every few yards our position would be given away by the sound of snapping branches under our feet. Then all at once there was a BANG, a flash of light, and the sound of a bullet whizzing past my right ear.
“Jeezus!” I cried out, yanking my gun from Marc’s mouth. I fired a shot blindly off in the direction I had been shot at. I then began to run, dragging my prisoner along beside me. I didn’t know if it was because his hands were still cuffed behind his back or what, but he seemed to be dragging his feet and stumbling and falling at every opportunity.
“Get Up! Get up! ” I hissed at him, pulling him up from the ground by his hair. He howled in pain and another bullet whizzed past me, burying itself in the trunk of a nearby tree.
“C’mon!” I roared and forced him forward.
I could hear the sounds of breaking branches close behind me now and the laboured sound of Steve’s breathing as he panted in the darkness like a giant dog. I guessed he was only yards from my heels and no longer looked like a human. I could sense we were coming to the edge of the wooded area as the trees began to thin and become less dense. I was relieved that we were reaching the road, but with fewer trees, I had less cover.
I made one last push and shoved Marc on with all the energy I had left. We reached the clearing and I could see the road and my car about two hundred yards ahead of us. Another shot whipped past and tore into the ground a couple of feet in front of us with an explosion of earth.
Without even glancing back, I pointed the gun behind me and fired. I knew instantly I had missed my target as the sound of paws rushing over the woodland floor was deafening in my ears.
I reached the car and fumbled with the key in the lock. Marc was now lying face up on the road, his hands cuffed behind him. Out of the woods and beneath the pale light of a crescent moon, I could see that he too looked more like a wolf than a man now as he tried to work himself free from the cuffs. He barked and howled. I took hold of his shoulder and dragged him round to the other side of the car. I glanced over the bonnet to see Steve come bounding out of the woods. He had ditched the gun, his hands now empty and shaped like two giant paws. He leapt into the air towards the car.
I yanked open the passenger door, and fought desperately to push Marc between the back and front seats of the car. He thrust his jaws at me as he tried to bite my face. The car shook violently and I looked up to see Steve crouching on the roof. He swiped at me with one razor-sharp paw, and then he was flying backwards through the air. I ducked to avoid his paw. When I looked over the bonnet of the car again, I saw a giant black winged creature spinning through the air, as it slashed, ripped, and bit at Steve. Marc continued to bark as I slammed the car door against his legs.
He instinctively drew them into the car, and I shut the door, imprisoning him inside. I looked back to see Steve go racing away up the road. The winged creature I had seen hovered momentarily in the air as if deciding whether to go after him or not, then turned to face me.
“Rom?” I breathed. “What are you doing here?”
“Come to save your sorry arse,” he said, dropping out of the sky and landing on the road.
With his wings disappearing back inside him, he strode towards me.
“I was right about Marc and his brother,”
I said.
Rom looked me up and down. I stared down at myself and could see I was covered in blood, puke, twigs, leaves, and dirt. “What in the name of sweet Jesus…” he started, his mouth hanging wide open.
“Marc murdered my friend, Pen,” I told him, taking the DVD from my jacket pocket. “It’s all on this disc.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Murphy
We drove home, Marc lying face down in the back of the car, barking and howling all the way. At the police station, Marc was taken to the cells, while I sat in Rom’s office, sipping at a hot mug of coffee. Rom sat away from me, silently watching the DVD I had found.
I ached all over and my head hurt. Not through any injury, cut, or bruise, and I had many, but because of the knowledge that Pen was dead was finally seeping its way into my consciousness.
Back at her house I’d been too preoccupied fighting to save my own life and bringing the DVD
and Marc to Rom. But now as I sat, bent forward, the realisation that my friend had gone, had been murdered, hammered away at my mind like a blunt axe. I wanted to be strong, I wanted to be able to accept I would never speak to or see her again, because the quicker I did, the sooner the agonising wound her death had created inside of me would be healed.
The urge to cry was too strong to resist. I felt as if my heart had been torn from my chest and repeatedly stamped on. Hot tears ran from my swollen eyes again and streamed down my cheeks. I bent forward and sobbed in pain. Those images of Pen thrashing about on the floor with Marc on top of her, hands round her throat, kept forcing their way into my mind like splinters of broken glass.
The mug of coffee I had been holding slipped from my fingers and onto the floor, as I rocked back and forth, clutching my head in my hands. I wanted those images of Pen suffering out of my mind. I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore. But they just kept coming, slicing away at my brain, and it was agony.
I hadn’t seen Rom get up and approach me, but I knew he was there, standing right next to me. He gently squeezed my shoulder with one of his huge hands.
“Go on, son, let it all out,” he whispered.
“There was nothing you could have done, nothing any of us could have done. By the looks of things, your friend died over a week ago.”
“Her name was, Pen. And she wasn’t just a friend to me...” I croaked.
“I don’t want to know what kind of relationship you had with her...” Rom cut over me, as if trying to protect himself in some way.
“She was like a sister to me...” I sobbed.
“Sure she was,” Rom soothed. “And you were a good brother. You risked your life to find out what had happened to her, even though she was a wolf.”
I wiped my running nose and eyes on the back of my sleeve and sat back in the chair and looked at Rom.
“Pen’s body is in the basement,” I told him.
“What basement?” he asked, looking confused.
“You’ll find Pen’s body in the basement at the Ooze bar. I’m sure that’s where Marc has hidden her.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Just a feeling – a hunch,” I assured him.
“I was right though, wasn’t I…about Pen, I was right.”
Rom looked away from me and I could sense his embarrassment and shame.
“Yeah you were, kiddo, you were.” His gaze met mine again and he said, “I’m sorry, I should’ve helped you sooner.”
“It won’t bring Pen back, and like you said – however painful it may be, Pen was dead long before I got that note,” I said.
“What note?” he asked suspiciously.
Realising what I had said, and not wanting to break my promise to Annie, I shook my head and said, “It was nothing, nothing at all.”
Rom sniffed, looked at me, and changing the subject, he said, “So you gonna come check out this basement with me, or not?”
I shook my head. The thought of finding Pen’s naked, dead body made me want to throw up again. I didn’t want to see her battered and bruised body, the strangulation marks about her neck, her lips swollen and purple. I wanted to remember her beautiful as she stared up at those magical moving pictures in The Hollows.
There’s no place like home! I could almost hear Dorothy whisper in my ear – but it was Pen’s voice I could hear.
“I’m not coming with you. I’m gonna go home,” I said to Rom and left his office.
The sun was peeking over the horizon when I eased open the front door to the small house I shared with Chloe. The night’s events had caught up with me and I needed sleep. As I had crossed town, I had fought a constant battle with my eyelids as they continually tried to slide shut. I had almost swerved from the road twice, but I had pushed on, my most immediate need wasn’t to fall into the warm embrace of Chloe, but to fall into bed.