The Turning Read online

  There was a strike that nearly loosened Brandon’s teeth and launched his body ten feet through the air.

  Something shattered behind him as he hit the far wall with bone-crunching force. He dropped to the floor amidst a shower of glass, wood, and old, tarnished silverware.

  Head still spinning, Brandon reached out, grabbed a wooden leg, and pulled the now-sideways table toward him. The canine was suddenly there, surging over the table edge, jaws snapping. Brandon held the beast by the throat with one hand and fumbled in the dark with the other. The muzzle of the wolf was coated in dried blood. Claws sunk into the table edge as the thing tried to pull it away to get at its prize. There was murder in its eyes.

  Brandon’s strength was no match for the giant hound’s. The head swiveled, rotated, and those dagger-like teeth sank deep into his arm. Brandon cried out just as his other hand closed on something cold and metallic. Without thinking, he plunged the object into the wolf’s eye, and only as he stabbed through the soft jelly of that left eye did he realize it was a silver fork. He drove it further in.

  The beast howled, and as quickly as it had appeared over the edge of the table, it was gone. He heard its paws against the floor as it ran from the room, leaving Brandon alone in shocked silence, trying desperately to stanch the flow of blood from his arm.

  Chapter One

  Puget Sound, Washington, September 2012

  He couldn’t exactly smell their fear, but then, he didn’t have to.

  There were three. Loud, crude… probably just under twenty but still especially “soft in the shell,” as his crusty old Papa would have said.

  It was typical lowlife behavior: cursing, strutting, acting generally unruly, sticking a big, angry middle finger up at the world.

  He hadn’t intended to silence them with little more than a withering look, but the effect was immediate; they barely caught a glimpse of his eyes, but in them they saw the beast. Their reaction, an immediate slackening of the features, their own eyes darting nervously away, was a genetically entrenched response of prey to predator… and a signal for Brandon to take his pills.

  The three slinked away, casting weary glances back in his general direction before distance emboldened them to continue acting like ass-hats.

  Brandon fished a small brown bottle with a plain white label out of his cargo pants and glanced around as he twisted off the lid. It was a sunny day at Puget Sound, which was unusual for Washington State this time of year. Still, the sun’s heat seemed feeble, unable to reach the terminal and warm the hundreds of bodies waiting to board the Fiesta cruise ship Rapture. Brandon shook two pills onto his palm. He replaced the lid, stuffed the bottle into his backpack, and fished out some water.

  A chill wind rolled in from the ocean, just a taste of the frigid temperatures awaiting him in Alaska. Brandon swept his eyes over the milling crowd as he unscrewed the water bottle lid: nuclear families, geriatrics, bachelors, gaggles of thirty-something women. He felt out of place, like an elevator in an outhouse (another one of Papa’s gems). But then, he always felt out of place; it had been that way even before his first turning all those years ago. The turning, of course, had changed everything.

  Two kids nearby were fighting over a soda. The brother claimed the prize from his protesting sister and ran. The parents followed, leaving Brandon a clear line of sight to a woman. Blonde, with short hair and dark eyes. A button nose and rose-petal lips. Full cheeks and a full figure, not obese but thick and soft in all the right places, like some alluring siren from a Frazetta painting. Brandon popped the pills into his mouth.

  The woman glanced up at him and held his gaze, unflinching. She smiled. Brandon stood, water bottle in one hand, lid in the other. The two remained transfixed until the connection was broken by a staff member announcing that the ship was now boarding. The woman looked worriedly down at her phone once more and then cast her eyes around the waterfront. She looked Brandon’s way a final time. The pills had started to dissolve in his mouth, and he made a sour face. The woman tilted her head, offered a slight smirk, and then was gone, pulling a large suitcase behind her, picking her way through the clamoring boarders as Brandon hurriedly gulped his water.

  ***

  Ginny Bowman swept the faces around her as she navigated the mob, but Kat was nowhere in sight. She checked her phone for the hundredth time. Nothing.

  Kat was never late. Just then the phone vibrated in her hand. The caller ID read KAT.

  “You’re calling me from the parking garage, right?”

  Ginny could read the guilt and frustration in her friend’s voice immediately. “I am SO sorry, Gin. I’ve been puking my guts into the toilet all morning, and you don’t even wanna know what’s coming out the other end. Henry and I tried this new place last night… Food was amazing, but boy, am I paying for it now. I was hoping it would get better but—oh shit, honey, are you okay?” Silence for a second, followed by retching sounds. Then: “Well, looks like Henry’s down for the count. God, I hate to do this to you...”

  “I can’t just go by myself...”

  “Jeezus, I feel like shit. I mean that both ways. I feel like shit for flaking too, but you should totally go. You took all that time off work. Besides, maybe, you know, you could still meet someone, right?”

  Ginny thought of the dark-haired man with the intense auburn eyes, wide shoulders, and five o’clock shadow. She had let her eyes linger, and in return he looked at her like he’d just sucked on a lemon.

  “No, this is crazy...”

  “DO IT. Go and meet some amazing guy, or meet a few guys and have amazing sex. Do the excursions and the overpriced drinks and all the stuff we planned on doing together and take all kinds of pictures and have the time of your life, or I swear I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Ginny stopped, phone to her ear, at the entrance to the terminal. Passengers filed past. She looked down at her suitcase, back at the waterfront, into the terminal and the line for boarding... This is nuts.

  “Come on, when’s the last time you did something impuls—ah shit, it’s my stomach again. I gotta go, sweetie. Text me from the ship.”

  The line cut off. Ginny hit the end button and stuck the phone in her back pocket.

  Never. That was the last time she did something impulsive. I’m not an impulsive person. A frustrated growl escaped her throat. She thought of her life over the past six months, hell, the past year. She really needed this vacation. She deserved it. It was a gift she had promised herself. If she didn’t cross that gangway, she knew the next several months would be spent questioning what she’d missed and whether or not she should have gone. That was always the way.

  You promised to take charge of your life. How can you do that if you keep giving in to your fears?

  Fears are good. Fears keep you alive.

  They can also keep you from truly living.

  What would she do if she didn’t go? Cancel her time off request and go back to work, like a good little soldier. Spend her nights watching the SyFy channel. Alone. What would Captain Janeway of the USS Voyager do? She’d get the fuck on that ship. Hell, she’d get on that ship and tell the captain to sit his ass down; she was taking over.

  Fuck it.

  Ginny inserted herself in the line and stepped into the terminal.

  ***

  Brandon had been one of the last ones through the line, and now he stood before the gangway where a cruise ship photographer waited expectantly by a festive sign that read RAPTURE.

  “Sir? Picture in front of the sign?”

  Brandon shook his head and turned away. A tightness had gripped his chest. He had expected some emotion but... this was the trip Celine had always wanted to take. They were meant to take it together, and now they would, but not in a way either of them had imagined. And though the ship would be returning, Brandon would not.

  The air seemed suddenly more frigid as he stepped onto the gangway.

  Chapter Two

  His cabin was on deck one, the Normandy deck. It
was the lowest passenger level, still above the water line. The room was tiny, less than two hundred square feet. At first he was confused to see a window with a tiny curtain on the far wall—his cabin was, after all, an “inside room” with no porthole. The puzzle was solved when he pulled away the cloth to reveal… a blank space. The window was apparently nothing more than a small recess with a decorative drape to make the place feel cozy.

  There was a knock. Upon opening the door, Brandon was greeted by a fervent Vietnamese woman named Tam. In a rapid-fire assault of broken English, she identified herself as his room stewardess, asked if his accommodations were agreeable, and without waiting for an answer, offered up any further services whenever he might need them. She also notified him where to find his life vest, as there would be a mandatory drill in just a few moments. With a short dip of the head she bounded off.

  Brandon closed the door and proceeded to empty the contents of his backpack onto the small bed: a few extra shirts, some cash, the pills, a single bottle of water, and a brick-like cardboard box, heavy with the weight of death. He lifted it gently, placed it on the nightstand, and stood before the square-shaped depression in the wall. He imagined it was a window looking out to another world, to a time and place that seemed unspeakably long ago and infinitely far away, a time and place before the Alley Cat and Millhouse Manor, where monsters stalked only his nightmares.

  What if he hadn’t gone after Beckett that night? Where would he be now? Alone, most likely, but Celine might still be alive if she had never met him.

  His life had never been easy, but it was a great deal simpler before the incident. In the weeks following the attack at Millhouse Manor, Brandon had slipped into a dreary gloom. He had known the killing would be big news, and it had been. He had also known that until he could sort out what happened to him on his own, he wanted no part of a media frenzy. What he had needed was solitude. So he had run and not looked back. The name Brandon Frye had been publicized as a missing person who was wanted for questioning in connection with what had been called a “vicious mauling,” probably by a pack of rabid wolves.

  Brandon had been sure they found wolf fur at the scene, and he had known there was a bit of his own blood left behind as well. Of course in 1976 there was no DNA testing in crime scene investigations, but at the time he had just been scared—not thinking clearly, not knowing where to go for help. After a few weeks, the search for Brandon had been called off, and the grisly demise of Jon Adams Beckett was officially ruled death by animal attack.

  Brandon had considered seeking medical care for his arm, but not long after the bleeding stopped, the bite wounds closed. Brandon had wrapped the arm and checked for infection regularly. After several days he had regained function in his muscles, though there had been black streaks like wisps of smoke emanating from the bite marks, like some kind of odd bruising. A few days later the markings disappeared, the scabs fell off, and the skin appeared to have healed.

  What had concerned him more than anything in the following weeks, however, were the sensations and changes his body was undergoing. Periods of intense pain, sweating, aching in his bones. And then there had been the other changes as well…

  Making his way into Idaho, he had spent many nights in secluded hotels, where his sleep had been haunted by visions of bleak, primeval vistas, of running naked beneath the moon, rending flesh and spilling blood. In his waking hours he couldn’t get the attack off his mind. He had followed the news and watched as the story quietly slipped away from the spotlight. In the meantime, Brandon had tried to wrap his head around what exactly happened, and what was happening to him. There was only one thing that had made any kind of sense, but that simply could not be. It was impossible.

  When Brandon was young, his Papa would spin all kinds of fantastic yarns—strange lights over the skies of Germany in World War 1; a “wild man” in the Ozarks when he was a trapper. He even told of a bear in North Dakota’s Turtle Mountains that was three times the size of the world’s biggest sumo wrestler. When he fed Brandon these tales, young Brandon would just shake his head and say, “No way, Papa, that’s impossible.”

  Papa would take a puff of his pipe, tap his pointer finger on top of Brandon’s head, and say, “Ain’t nothin’ impossible in this damn crazy world, boy.”

  In Idaho, as the moon had waxed, Brandon’s senses had become heightened. The day before the full moon, he had been able to smell not only every other tenant in his motel, but what they had been eating… and he had heard most of their conversations, even with the doors closed.

  He hadn’t known what would happen next, but the deepest recesses of him had suspected. What he had known was that he needed to be far away from anyone when or if it did happen. And so exactly one month after the attack, on the night of the full moon, Brandon had driven out to a secluded back road in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. As twilight crept across the sky, he had parked his truck, rolled up the windows, locked the door, and stowed the keys in the glove box. Hours later a dingy white lunar globe had peered over the mountain peaks. What followed were the most excruciatingly painful hours of Brandon’s life, ended by a merciful ten-hour blackout.

  When he had finally come to, the vehicle had been shredded. The upholstery had been ripped apart, the seats destroyed. Claw marks had raked the dash and interior of the doors. Tufts of fur had been scattered throughout… And so at last, there had been proof: as impossible as it might seem, as much as it had made him question his own sanity, the evidence in addition to the few agonizing memories that survived before the blackout had presented proof that Brandon was no longer able to deny…

  It had turned out that Papa was right: wasn’t nothin’ impossible in this crazy damn world, and monsters were very, very real.

  ***

  Alexander Kroft stood in the center of his cabin, assessing its suitability. Though he had been appointed a suite with balcony, the space was inarguably cramped. The bed sheets possessed seemingly the same thread count as burlap. The toilet paper could easily be used in a belt sander, the walls were a hideous ochre that lent one the impression of dwelling in a mud hut, and the furniture would be outshined in a low-rent consignment shop. Still, he would make do.

  The location of the room, full to stern, tucked into a corner on the port side at the end of a long hallway on deck four, was among the final lodgings available at the time of securing passage. It would not have been his first choice as a tactical base of operations, but along with everything else, it would simply have to do.

  Alexander unlatched his Rimowa multi-purpose case, retrieved a spiral notebook, pen and satellite phone and placed them on the nearby counter. A dull ache bloomed in his left shoulder. He rubbed it for just a moment before opening a smaller case that had been part of his checked baggage. It was lined with foam cutouts on the inside, and in the cutouts were housed various sedative phials. Alexander inspected these to make sure they were all intact and accounted for and then closed the lid.

  A seagull squawked from its perch on the balcony railing outside. He briefly entertained the idea of setting food out and devising a snare to trap one of the birds, so that he might concoct unique and unorthodox methods of torturing it. The notion provided him with the faintest stirrings of an erection.

  Just then the annoyingly overzealous voice of the cruise director, Rocco, announced that the life boat drill would commence shortly and that all passengers were required to assemble in their designated areas. Alexander looked to his remaining luggage. He would have to sort and hang his wardrobe after the drill. Outside, the seagull yawped and took wing.

  ***

  Ginny proceeded to her muster station, showing off the Rapture’s latest in stylish yet sensible orange life vests. Halfway down the outer deck, among the other passengers lined up beneath the overhanging lifeboats (or escape pods, as she liked to think of them), she spotted the broad-shouldered shot of handsome she had spotted earlier at the terminal.

  Affecting her best attempt at nonchalance, Gi
nny sidled up next to the scruffy stranger and faced the dock. She peered sideways at him, caught him glancing back, and smiled. He looked mildly uncomfortable, but damn if he wasn’t handsome in a very rugged, drag-you-back-to-my-cave kind of way. His dark hair just barely brushed his shoulders, framing features that were hard and angular, but his eyes were a soft, light hazel and absolutely mesmerizing. She pulled out her buzzing phone to see a message from Kat: “Feeling a little better. You drunk yet?”

  “No,” she texted, “but I’m standing by a hot guy who could be single.”

  Ginny looked back at him. He gazed straight ahead, then met her eyes once again. Seeming somewhat flustered, he said:

  “I was taking pills.”

  Ginny’s eyebrows lifted in befuddlement. “Hm?”

  Those eyes locked with hers. “I think I kind of… made a face at you earlier. I had just taken pills.”

  “Oh! Uh-huh.” He was talking to her. This was good. Don’t get too excited. Don’t blow it. Play it cool.

  She glanced at her phone: “Find out what he looks like naked.”

  Ginny’s eyes widened as she flipped her phone face-down. “I, uh, was pretty out of it, myself. Girlfriend bailed on me last minute. I could have stayed but I figured what the hell, go for it, right?” Okay, stop talking. Don’t look desperate.

  The stranger regarded her silently. He thinks I’m a freak. I talked too much. Wait a minute… did he just look me up and down?

  He did. Except it didn’t feel strictly sexual. No, it was as if he were evaluating not her body but… the whole of her.

  She smiled, flipped over her phone, and typed, “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  “You’re very courageous,” the stranger said.

  Ginny eyeballed him, lips twisted. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  Mr. Handsome seemed about to reply when the cruise director came over the intercom and launched into his safety speech, describing the emergency protocols while crew members demonstrated the use of the life vests. Ginny snuck a peek at her phone and read, “Do it. Do the deed. Take pictures.”