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

“You can’t hurt them now,” Rick said when he heard Tom call out.  

And that’s when Schwitzer lost it.

“Verräter,” the German werewolf hissed out. Which was easily translatable. It meant traitor. The game was over. He wanted Rick dead. So Rick ran.

One thing Rick was skilled at… and that was running and hiding. He might not have been the most physically strong werewolf in the world. But he was best at evasion. He had mastered it after running from the SRA in New York City, all over Massachusetts, California, and wherever else his family had an animal reserve or a building his family had rented for the full moon. He had even successfully evaded the Alabama werewolf pack for a night on their own turf—but that was before he had even known there was a werewolf pack in Alabama. He had thought then that they were just ordinary wolves.

But the Germans were different. Not that they were smarter than those of the Alabama pack, but they were more savage. They had no scruples. It was like the difference between the French (the Loup Garou) and the Alabama wolves. The French were sneaky in their own way, knew how to hunt down an urban werewolf, but they had to use his own family to get to him. But even the French were not man eaters. And neither were the Alabama wolves… not really. It wasn’t that the Alabama pack hadn’t killed that SRA hunter who had come into their turf on the full moon, but that they did not kill humans to eat them. The difference between these German wolves was that this particular family hunted humans on purpose.

His crack to Schwitzer about people escaping the Nazis and ending up not escaping their pack was supposed to be a warning to Jordan. He wanted his friends to know what kind of monsters these wolves were without betraying the secret. But nothing had worked. And now Jordan was dead.

Rick’s body ached. His hands were shaking. And he could hear some of the wolves sniffing about the castle for him. But Rick long knew the tricks of the trade in evading in urban spaces. The wolves out there had thought he would go into the wild. And though he was skilled at evading in the wild, it was their turf and they knew it better than he did—and he had gotten a tour of the castle. Besides, he knew how to knock off his scent so they could not track him. As a wolf with a super sensitive nose, he was fully aware of what could be used against wolves like himself.

One trick was to shed the hair and go human. He did it quickly where he could hide the hair.

The other was to put on the clothes of one of the occupants of the place. He found a room and hastily grabbed a shirt and some shorts. He didn’t even bother for shoes. After that, he kept to the shadows, hid tremulously behind furniture as wolves and people passed. And when he could, he scrambled up into the large wood beams of the castle’s old great hall so he could obtain a top view of things rather than staying below where he could be pounced on. Schwitzer had no clue where he was. He, like the others, assumed Rick was outside in the woods.

Nerves taut, his fingernails digging into the large overhead beam to keep steady, Rick listened to the noises in the ancient building, the creaks, the echoes, the claws on stone and the taps of feet in shoes. He could tell no person in the castle was entirely human. None of the house servants were, though they were clearly lower in the pack hierarchy. European wolf packs had those—rigid hierarchies akin to medieval kings and lords with serfs. It wasn’t very wolfish, but then werewolf packs always seemed to blur the lines between what was wolf and what was human. Their worship of Diana was proof of this. Diana, after all, wasn’t a wolf but a virgin moon goddess.

As he listened nervously and smelled intently for wolves on the hunt, he heard familiar voices. And not German voices. American English.

Peter.

And of course Tom.

Rick’s heart rose, the sweat on his upper lip cooling. Peter McCabe was there. And though he was no swordsman, Peter knew more about ancient folklore and paganism than most in the Seven. He also had an unorthodox way of handling supernatural problems as he did not think under traditional lines. The guy would fight a dragon with a canister of flame retardant and outsmart the SRA with a soccer ball to the face. He also was rarely shocked about anything. He handled things brilliantly with a level head.

Peter’s voice echoed, responding to Tom Brown. Rick could barely hear what they were saying exactly as they were not going into the great hall. But he strained to. There was no way to contact them. Not from there.

“Hallo! Wer bist du? Du kannst nicht hier sein!” one of the house staff shouted.

“What’d he say?” Peter asked Tom.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom snapped back. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Gotcha.”

And their voices went farther away from the room Rick was in. Rick cringed, wondering if he ought to stay where he was or to join them. Would he be a hindrance? Or would he be a help?

“Hallo! Du kannst nicht dorthin gehen!” the house servants shouted after them, their voices getting less now.

Someone walked into the room below him. Rick lay flat against the beam, to reduce the chance of being spotted in case the man looked up. He was searching behind furniture—sniffing behind furniture. Damn. Apparently some of them suspected he could be in the castle. It proved they weren’t all stupid. He might have to run.

Rick held his breath, slipping further out of sight in case the man thought to look up. He listened rather than watched.

Out in the corridor, Rick heard Peter swear—what exactly, it was unclear. Tom shouted louder curses, their revulsion exploding like a bomb. Each word Rick could comprehend sent shivers down his body. They had found Jordan.

Closing his eyes, Rick felt such relief. And yet he also felt like dying again. It confirmed that he had not just dreamed the entire attack on Jordan. His brain had been rejecting it. It had been too much for his mind to grasp. But it had not been a nightmare. Jordan really was dead, and those wolves had tried to eat him.

Also hearing their shouts, the servant below left the great hall and ran out to join the other who had been shouting in German at them. The shouts in German had converted into wolf growling, then snarling. And the curses in English increased as did the commotion. Loud clashes and bangs with yelps and screams—mostly cussing from Peter and Tom as they clearly were not going to play nice with a dead body at their feet. This noise drew the attention of more of the housing staff. Tom’s shouts ordering the imps to torment the wolves within the castle walls reverberated like a boom, almost echoing throughout the castle in a war cry. “GET THOSE DAMN WOLVES OUT OF HERE!”

“Oh, crap,” Rick muttered under his breath. Already he could feel imps grab him to ‘get him out’. “Hey!” He hissed at the air around him, clinging to the large beam with growing claws. “Tom would not be happy if you cause me trouble! You know exactly which wolves he is talking about.”

For a brief second the tugging stopped. But then he felt the imps kick him for spite.

However, they soon left him alone. It amazed Rick that it had worked, and yet he knew Tom’s imp friends were well acquainted with him. He had seen a few of them, thanks to Tom’s many hijinks.

The battle below continued like bedlam, and then stopped abruptly. Rick could hear their human footfalls as Tom and Peter went on to wherever it was they were going. They didn’t seem to be looking for him. If they were, they would have called his name. They were up to something else.

Not even ten minutes later, Rick heard a series of deafening crashes against the wall ahead of him. He could hear pottery and something else thud against the stone walls, actually making the stone structure shake. This lasted for a while. And as this loud clamor continued, the tormented staff crept back into the castle’s great hall, most as wolves with teeth bared, most limping, several with on wobbly feet with headaches, grumbling in German together. A good number clustered just below Rick, conferring together on what to do against Tom and Peter—whom they called the Dämonenjäger. Rick didn’t understand most of what they were saying, keeping his breathing as quiet as possible while he listened. But as they strained to pull back into human form, nursing wounds and what looked like honey burns, he watched from above, hoping none of them would look up. One of them grabbed a phone from off a table and called Schwitzer.

“Herr Schwitzer, Es gibt Jäger in der Burg.”

Rick could not hear Schwitzer’s response, but he could see from the tense muscles of the wolves below that he was shouting furiously at them, and also announcing his possible return.

“Nein, wir haben ihn nicht gesehen,” the one servant answered Schwitzer, looking around and then up. Rick had moved out of sight just in time. “Diese Leute haben Magie.”

Something Schwitzer shouted made the servant jerk his ear away from his cell phone. Rick could hear this bit. << Er ist nur ein Wolf! Er hat keine Magie! >>

“Jawohl.”

Rick had no idea what was said, only that if the servant had been in wolf form, his tail would have been tucked between his legs.

Those in the group below who were not honey-burned dispersed to go after Peter and Tom. Rick noticed one in human form grabbed a gun from out of a compartment in the end table. Apparently, though they were wolves in their souls, as they saw it, they were not averse to using more efficient weapons against their enemy. Rick hoped Tom would spot the gun in time. He had the overwhelming urge to jump down to warn them, but Rick realized even now that his presence would only fuel the wolves’ insane passion to kill. He stayed where he was. Besides, Emory and Rhett were still not out of danger, and Jordan could not be left in that wretched German castle. As long as he remained missing, he could provide distraction to at least reduce the numbers his friends had to face.

More fighting ensued below in the corridors, then on the roof beyond the wall. Whatever damage Tom and Peter were doing there, had stopped and it was now a battle ground. As the fighting continued, Rick picked up the noise of a distant, soon increasing whup-whup-whup sound of helicopter rotors on the air. As it got closer the wind rose. The sound of the trees and branches outside gusted and whooshed, thrown back and stirred up by the approaching aircraft. Rick knew it wasn’t his aircraft. They didn’t really have helicopters in Europe. His family only really used small jets except in their wildlife reserves. It had to be Michael Toms.

Michael had come.

Relief washed over Rick again like a wave of warm water. His taut nerves relaxed as he lay against the ceiling beam. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, closing his eyes, his breathing easing. He counted Tom with Peter and Michael—that was three now. And perhaps someone else was on the helicopter with him. Maybe more. A helicopter could hold a few people, right? Rick hoped it was at least Daniel or Semour with him. It wouldn’t be Andy, who was Stateside and had texted him not long before he had returned to Cochem telling him that Jessica was