Grimm Wolf - Julie Steimle (fantasy novels to read .txt) 📗

Witchdoctor was also famously from Massachusetts, the same state where Rick was from. Emory still wanted to know for sure, but he was starting to believe it.

For perhaps the next couple hours they heard nothing but distant howls and cries in German. There was an occasional shout in English, but for the most part they listened to the silence of the forest night. That is, until the helicopter showed up.

The sound of the copter was distant at first, but then it grew louder and stronger as the tree leaves blew back in the gusts of the propeller blades until it was deafening. They didn’t actually see it as much as they could feel it—the air pressure and the effects. A spotlight shone down from the helicopter through the tree canopy, searching the ground below for a landing spot. And it did this for a while before the noise and commotion finally went into the castle then died away—as it clearly had landed. Tom must have cleared out the landing spot. But when it did settle and shut off, everything around them seemed more deafening. The animal and insect noises were gone.

“What was that?” Rhett murmured.

“Their air support?” Emory whispered.

It was not fifteen minutes later before four men jogged back from the castle carrying a stretcher. They recognized Tom and Peter, but with them was none other than CEO-to-be Michael Toms whom Rhett immediately recognized and Emory kind of sort of knew, but wasn’t sure about. Rhett explained to him in hisses that Michael Toms was due to rise through the ranks of Tristain Enterprises, but was also rumored to have once been kidnapped by a cult and had strange habits that upset the financial community. He had also been rumored to be a friend of Rick’s, though they had never met him before. Here, he was carrying a sword while wearing black Kevlar and armed with hand guns. The man with him was even more startling, as he was as pale and white haired as Tom, but his cold blue eyes looked as if he had lived for ages and he was actually Merlin in disguise—a young one. He had a goatee. This man was also wearing a silver breastplate and greaves.

“Up there.” Peter pointed.

“Oh, brilliant,” Michael seemed to moan. He looked to Tom. “Did you have to cover them in honey?”

“Yes.” Tom lifted his chin, nodding sharply. “No wolf would even get near them now.”

Groaning, Michael nodded. “Damn that truth. But it is going to a devil to clean up.” He then called in to the tree. “You two, stay there. We’re coming up.”

“Is there anything valuable you need us to get?” Peter called out as all four of them set down the stretcher on the ground.

“Our bags out of the trunk of the car…” Emory murmured with a glance to Rhett. “They’ve got our passports.”

Rhett nodded, cringing.

“I’ll get them!” Tom hopped, running off.

The three on the ground watched him, groaning.

“Damn, he’s impulsive,” Michael said.

“We need him to get them out of the tree,” the pale old-soul chimed in, gesturing to Tom who was long gone to the car.

“Just a wait a minute,” Peter interjected. “Tom’s fast enough.”

All of them waited, including Emory and Rhett who had extracted themselves from the sticky tent and ropes. Rhett scooted to the edge of the tree branch, prepared to jump if necessary. They both desperately wanted out of that area, no matter what the risk. However, Tom was back rather fast, with hands empty and grinning, nodding to them. It took just five minutes. “All done in and in the chopper. What next?”

The pale guy in silver gestured to the tree. “Safely get them down for us.”

“Emory can climb down,” Tom said, then launched himself into the air. He hopped onto the tree branch over them with a flip. He turned around and peered down at Rhett. “Are you ready?”

Rhett’s eyes were wide, and it took a minute to cope with Tom’s mischievous gaze and Peter Pan posture, but he nodded. Tom reached down and heaved Rhett into the air. They dropped—and strangely they did not plummet down under Rhett’s weight. Emory slid down the tree trunk, following them.

Tom gently carried Rhett to the stretcher. It was amazing actually that he was gentle, but he was. He seemed to handle Rhett as if he were all egg shell and glass, and he laid Rhett down so he could be comfortable as they were to carry him back to wherever.

When Emory got close to the forest floor, Peter rushed up to him and helped him the last length—or was about to until he saw the guy was heavily coated in honey. He held back and looked to Tom. “Really? This is a little excessive.”

Tom shrugged, smirking.

“We can’t even touch Howie to help him, Tom,” Peter protested.

Tom shrugged again. Then he produced the wet wipes. “I came prepared.”

Peter snatched them. “I don’t think wet wipes will be enough. The guy has to use special soap.”

Cringing this time, Tom nodded, ducking his head between his shoulders. “Ok. I made a booboo.”

Michael shot him a dirty look. “Booboo? How about grave error?”

Tom pointed to Rhett. “I wanted no room for even one more wolf bite.”

Peter gazed down on Rhett then crouched next to him, examining his torn up leg and the tourniquet. He nodded at the first aid then looked to Emory who was watching them anxiously. “You did a good job. At least he won’t die of blood loss now.”

The pale man in silver nodded. “An exceptionally good job. Very few can escape a werewolf pack as well as you did.” He then gestured for the group to heave up the stretcher as if he were used to giving orders to their gang. It was a carry stretcher, not one with wheels. Two quickly lifted the front end. The other two went to the back, heaving it up. Emory followed them.

“How many werewolf pack are out there?” Emory felt sick, glancing into the darkness as he could hear wolf cries in the distance.

“On Earth?” the pale man in silver asked. He was surprisingly young looking, now that Emory could see up close. He sported a classic goatee, which made him appear older, but he still had to be a college student just like them. He just felt old. “No clue. Howie usually keeps pack locations secret from us.”

“Why?” Emory gasped. “They’re man eaters!”

“Not all of them,” Peter said. He sighed, heavily shaking his head as he trudged over the forest floor with the stretcher. “And Rick does not fink on wolves. You do understand that he is one of them.”

Emory and Rhett both shuddered. They nodded, both with grief.

“Has he ever…?” Emory breathed out.

“No,” all four of them said.

“Howie’s not like that,” Peter added gently. And it was the Witchdoctor. Up close, they recognized his face. He was still wearing his infamous red crystal along with shark’s teeth on a necklace. Strangely enough, so were Michael and the pale man in silver. They each had one except for Tom. That’s when Emory recalled that so did that guy Daniel. And he suspected that man James had on one as well.

“Howie…” Emory murmured over the name Peter called Rick, remembering Howie was short for Howard. He then asked, “How long did you know he was a werewolf?”

Three of them exchanged glances. Tom seemed to look the other way. But then Tom was not normal to begin with. He probably knew about Rick since day one.

“I knew before they did,” Michael said from the front of the stretcher. “I found out when I joined the SRA—Supernatural Regulator’s Association.”

They stared. Michael Toms looked more like a black ops soldier than a nutty monster hunter. Of course now that they knew there were monsters, it did not feel so nutty.

“We’ve heard of it,” Rhett murmured, staring skyward as he listened to the conversation.

“Yeah…” Michael nodded grimly. “And I’m sure you’ve heard all the werewolf rumors about the Deacon family, then.”

Both Emory and Rhett nodded. Emory said, “We have. But…”

“You didn’t believe it.” Michael chuckled, nodding. “That’s ok. Most sane people wouldn’t. And most of the talk about them isn’t true anyway.”

Most wasn’t true? But they just saw him become a werewolf. What part wasn’t true?

“Most sane people don’t even know the supernatural world exists,” Peter chimed in.

Emory and Rhett liked how Peter said ‘sane people’ rather than ‘normies’ like Tom had. Tom had made them feel ignorant. They didn’t like that. Peter at least gave them the chance to realize their lack of knowledge about this stuff wasn’t ignorance. It was normal. It was sane.

“We found out Howie was a werewolf when he came back from Gulinger Private Academy in New York,” the guy in silver added. “None of us knew before that—even though in our town it was rumored the Deacons were werewolves. We just thought it was slander from the witches.”

“Witches?” Rhett lifted his head from the stretcher. He shot a look to Emory. That conversation with Jordan two days previous came back to them like a kick in the gut. Why did these guys have to verify that Rick had not been superstitious and witches were also real? It was too much.

“Hey, stop it. You’ll make his head explode,” Peter said, shooting the silver guy a look.

“No, they should know,” Michael retorted matter-of-factly. Then he said to them. “My mother was a witch.”

Both Rhett and Emory drew in breaths. This was not good. Real world clashing with this magical weird one. Very bad. They preferred just thinking of Michael Toms as a poor sucker who had been tormented by a cult and who had gotten involved with some freaky monster hunters. They didn’t need the witch factor also.

“That’s my connection to Middleton Village,” Michael explained despite their pleading eyes to go back into ignorance. “My mother is from there. And she was commissioned by the coven to find and marry a rich CEO who could rival the Deacon family.”

Rhett and Emory shared panicked looks.

“They needed the power and money to keep the town stable, and they didn’t want it from a werewolf family,” Michael said, not really looking at their reactions. “Problem was, my mother fell in love with my dad and she tried to leave the coven. They had intended for her to have him bring the company to Middleton Village to supplant Deacon Enterprises, and then my mom was supposed to have my dad killed and she inherit the company through shares. Then the coven would run the company.”

“No way,” Peter said, sounding genuinely amazed in the forest dark. “I never heard the full story. That was their plan?”

“Yep,” Michael nodded. He readjusted his hold on the stretcher.

They were getting close to the castle. It was getting easier to see as the three cover thinned as they had already past the gates. At the castle itself, they could see the lights were barely on. The car they had barely escaped hours ago looked thrashed. Pieces of tire were everywhere and one dead wolf lay on the ground. Apparently it had been killed in a fight, though it was not clear which. As they passed it, Emory noticed how torn up their escape route truly was. There had been no way they would have reached the road. Where rims had dug a way to the gate, underneath them was almost no gap from the bottom of the car to the ground. They were in too deep. When getting closer to the castle, they passed blood here and there. And fur—shed and torn off. Rick’s pants were still there, along with his shirt, exactly where he had left them. Emory stared at both, his eyes fixing on the proof that what they had seen had definitely been real.

Catching Emory’s temptation to pick Rick’s pockets for his wallet, Tom picked both clothing items up, checking the pockets himself with a wink at him. He tucked the wallet into his own pockets. When they reached the castle, Emory