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positioned. He looked into their faces. Despite his fear he was
fascinated by them cruel, enigmatic, strangely beautiful. They stepped
toward him, stopped again.  I can help you, he said softly.
Three of them executed the attack while the fourth kept watch. He was dead,
his body rolled under a car within five seconds. One jumped into his chest to
wind him; another collapsed his legs from behind, and a third tore his
throat out the moment he hit the ground.
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Their race had long ago forgotten its ancient relationship with man. His
hand-signals had meant nothing to them, nothing at all. The four of them
literally tore him apart in their fury, ripped at him in a kind of
frenzy of rage. They were the mother, the second-mated pair and the
female of the third. Old Father had disappeared, they weren t sure why.
Perhaps he was too ashamed or too hurt to take his new place
behind the youngest in the pack.
But he was nearby. Older, cannier and more sensitive than the others, he knew
better than they how desperate the situation had become. He was determined to
right the wrong he had done his pack even at the cost of his life. Although
he was unable to see them, he heard their attack.  They act from fear, he
thought.  They need strength and courage.
And he resolved to help them. He had been aware for some moments
of a human presence on the roof of the building and took care to stay close
to the wall, out of the line of sight from above.
He went quickly to the front of the building, slid under a car and waited. A
few minutes later a pedestrian came along, opened the door to the lobby. He
ran in past her.
 Hey!
 A dog damn it, Charlie, I let in a dog!
 I ll get it Jesus, it s moving
!
He raced for the stairs and went up. He knew exactly where he was going and
why. He trusted to luck that these were the right stairs. The shouts of the
humans faded below him. Maybe they would rationalize his presence, maybe not.
He recognized the danger of what he was doing and he knew how it would
probably end.
But he owed this to the pack he loved.
Dick Neff cursed out loud when he felt the cold and was tugged by the wind.
Becky was one hell of a girl to have endured this for two Goddamn hours! He
was proud of her, there hadn t been a single peep of complaint. A person like
that humbled you, hell, awed you.
She was a total pro, no question about it.
He was heavier than his wife and the wind didn t force him to slither on his
stomach.
But he crawled. He crawled slowly and carefully, not liking the way those
gusts hit him from behind and made him slide. Thirty stories was a long
Goddamn drop. You went over, you d have time to think about it on the way
down. Plenty of time. He hated heights like this. The view from his apartment
was beautiful but he hated this. In his nightmares he always fell, and lately
he had been falling a lot. His subconscious reached out to him, imparting a
strange déjà vu
. It was as if he had been here before, crawling toward this precipice, shoved
and jostled by this same wind. This was going to be a test of
every particle of endurance and courage that he had. No wonder Ferguson had
caved in so fast, this was a direct confrontation with the wild power of
nature and beyond that there was
the even greater danger of what they faced.
He could tell where Becky had been lying by the indentation in the snow. He
went to approximately the same place. First the equipment check, then the
camera sweep.
Nothing there.
Now the voice check. Wilson came in clear. They punched off with the mike
signal and
Dick settled in as best he could. He was just making another sweep
when he heard a muffled bang behind him. The door? He turned. It stood ten
feet away. It was breathing hard, as if it had just run up the stairs.
He jumped to his feet, snapping away with the camera. Then it moved and he
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hurled the camera at it The machine bounced against its flank and
rolled away. It wasn t attacking, probably because he was so close to the
edge that a direct assault would send them both over. It moved quickly,
trotting to the edge itself, now parallel with him. He was going for the
Ingram when it jumped him. He lurched sideways, slipped on the ice and found
himself half over the edge. But so was the werewolf, just a few feet away, so
close he could see its face.
They hung there, it with its forepaws dug into the icy edge, he hanging by his
arms. Its eyes bored into his with a look of hatred more terrible than he had
ever seen before. The eyes darted around, calculating, seeking the crucial
advantage that would kill Dick Neff, leaving the werewolf alive.
Carefully, not looking at the emptiness beneath his feet, Dick brought an
arm down toward the .38 he had in a pocket. This was his one chance, his only
chance. He wanted so desperately to live, not to fall! The inches-high
concrete lip was the only thing that held him here, and it held him now by
only one arm. The creature tried to pull itself up, failed, and hung still. It
bared its teeth and made a low, horrible noise. Its eyes followed
his movements, its face suddenly registered understanding. Now it began to
slide along the ledge toward him, inch by inch closing the gap between them. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]