Chapter Thirty-Three – Molly

 

I kept my eyes locked on Bobby as Luke stepped back a little, and out of my view. Not allowing my natural inclination to follow that body of his, with its defined muscles, was harder than I’d thought. But I did. I just kept my eyes on the driver and nothing else, the pistol heavy in my hand even without any bullets in it.

“It’s just to make you look more menacing,” Luke had explained as he handed it to me. “That’s all.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Well, you won’t have to carry it for very long. You’ll be fine.”

As I watched Bobby’s eyes widen in fascinated horror, I knew now that there were things more menacing than a slip of a woman carrying a pistol.

“What in the…?” Bobby asked, his words trailing off into a choked cry. He turned to me, his eyes and his open mouth so open and wide that they threatened to overtake his face. “H-h-h-e…?”

“Just watch, you son of a bitch,” I growled, my thumb running over the plastic-like grip of the handle.

“What is…? Did you drug me, or something?”

“No drugs, Bobby,” I said. “This is as real as it gets.”

“Peyote or something? Acid? PCP? You gave me something, you sons of bitches!”

“You ever heard of drugs doing something like this? Making a man turn into a lion in front of your eyes?”

He physically shook, a spastic twitch that ran through his whole body as he began to shiver in fear.

“There are things out there you don’t understand, Bobby,” I said. “That’s what he meant. A man didn’t take Heidi, something else did. If you’d been there with the rest of the security, like you were supposed to, instead of calling out and having me replace you, she’d have been fine. Or we would have known about it earlier, maybe have been able to do something. But since I was a woman, Heidi wanted me to leave. You were paid to protect her, and you failed.”

“I’d taken plenty of girls up there and never had a problem before! I swear, I didn’t know anything would happen to her if I didn’t go to work that night!”

Behind me, Luke groaned, a low, animalistic noise that made my lizard brain tremble in fear. My heart began to pump, sending the blood rushing through my veins like water passing through a dam’s sluice. But then, as the musky scent of his fur descended, a kind of calm passed over me, almost like I knew my protector was here. That the creature beside me, human or not, was here to defend me and my friends, and any other innocents.

“That’s not good enough, Bobby,” I growled.

“I-I-I didn’t know,” he said, pleading in a choked voice as he looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. I glanced down, noticing the wet spot as it spread across the front of his boxers. “I just needed a night off, that’s all. I just needed to chill for one night, and not spend it driving around whores.”

Luke growled now, and heavy paw steps sounded on the desert floor behind me. A low growl, a rumbling sound deep in his leonine chest.

“Okay, okay! Not whores! Women, all right? I just wanted a night off from chauffeuring around the women!”

Luke stepped into view, his great, maned head down low to the desert floor as he fixed Bobby with his predatory stare. In the moonlight, he seemed to glow like some celestial creature.

Bobby kicked against the ground with his legs, trying to get away from Luke’s approaching form, a trough of sand left in his wake to mark his passing. “Please! Just let me go, okay? I’ll tell you anything!”

Luke licked his chops as he approached, putting his paws to either side of Bobby’s struggling feet.

“Don’t make too sudden of a movement,” I said, mildly enjoying the torment I was giving the driver. This was less than he deserved, but I knew I couldn’t have really hurt him. Not like this.

“If I tell you, he won’t eat me?” Bobby asked, tears cutting lines in the dirt and sand on his cheeks. “He’ll leave me alone?”

“That’s right, Bobby. The big scary lion will leave you alone.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, practically blubbering now. “I’ll tell you, okay? J-j-just make him go away first!”

“No!” I said, taking a step closer at the same time as Luke. Together, we crowded over the driver, both leaning in. Luke lowered his great muzzle to the side of his face, snuffing deeply of his fear. “You fucking tell us now, goddammit!”

Through the tears, he could barely get out the password, or the details of the security. But, in the end, he did. Our looming over him probably didn’t help matters.

Less than five minutes later, Luke was back in his human form, pulling his new clothes on at the SUV’s open rear door. Dressed in Bobby’s slightly oversized black suit, minus the coat I still had over my shoulders, he returned to me and the silent Bobby, his folded clothes under one arm.

“Tell anyone about this, and they’ll never believe you, Bobby,” he said. “Not for a minute.”

“Think I don’t fucking know that?” He was still trussed up on the ground, and the smell of him was becoming too much to bear. “Jesus. So, Heidi really got took by something like you? Like some kind of boogeyman or some shit?”

Luke grimaced as he approached Bobby. “Not exactly like me. Something not human, though, that’s for sure.” He came to a stop next to the driver. “I’m going to untie you, okay? You try anything, and you’ll regret it.”

“Believe me, man,” he said, shifting over on his side to present his wrists to Luke, “I don’t fucking doubt it. Those other girls get taken by him, too? Or, whatever this thing is?”

“You know about the other girls?” I asked.

“Bits and pieces, yeah,” Bobby said as Luke began to untie his bonds. “They weren’t from our agency, or anything, so we never talked too much about it. Most girls who are on the street, you know, they’re the ones who have the trouble. Drugs and all that, guys that ain’t vetted, pimps not keeping a close enough eye. But, yeah, I’ve heard about ’em. Girls just disappearing, showing up days later. Happens more than people like to admit.”

“Not keeping a close enough eye?” I asked as Luke undid the first set of knots and moved down to Bobby’s ankles. “Like you?”

Bobby winced and glanced away as he began to rub at his wrists, and I could tell he was reacting as much to my words as to the removal of the bonds. “Yeah. I know. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean for Heidi to get hurt, or to end up like them other girls. I know what I was saying earlier, and I was a fucking dick, but I didn’t mean anything by it. I like the women we work with, for the most part.” He paused, licked his lips. “You think she’s okay? Heidi, I mean.”

“There’s a really good chance,” Luke said, undoing the last of the cord and unwinding it from the driver’s pale ankles, only to reveal purplish and red near-bruises all over his veined skin. “But we’ve got to hurry if we’re going to help her.”

Bobby nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed again. “What’s going to happen to me, now? That I know your secret and all?”

Luke chuckled. “Nothing. Like I said, no one’s going to believe you, so who would you tell?”

“Just leave me out here, then?”

“More or less. We’re going to take your car and your phone.” He paused, pointing out away from us to a rocky outcropping. “Go over that hill over there, and you’ll find an old country road that leads back to the highway to Prophet. You got a four or five mile hike, but you can make it before the sun comes up if you hustle.”

Bobby nodded and sighed as he pulled at the front of his damp boxers.

Luke patted the clothes beside him. “These might not fit you great, but they’re what you’ve got. They should keep you warm enough if you keep moving. I’m leaving the shoes for you, ’cause yours were a little small.”

“What then? If I get a ride, I mean?”

Luke shrugged as he went to stand. “Get a ride back to the city, I guess. You’re an adult, figure it out.” He came back over to me, hooking an arm into mine, and we both turned to head back to the Tahoe.

“Ain’t worried I’m gonna get a phone and call the people up at the mansion?” Bobby called to our backs before we’d even taken two steps. “Let ’em know you two’s sneaking in?”

Luke and I both exchanged a quick look, before he was back over Bobby, glaring down at him. That hard look came back over his face, and he seemed like he was about to bring down the wrath of God on that man.

Bobby instinctively cowered away, but was clearly too afraid to move. The fear was written on his face like the headline on a Sunday morning paper.

“You want that on your conscience, on top of Heidi’s disappearance, you go right ahead, Bobby,” Luke replied, his voice low and emotionless. With every word, he seemed to draw closer to the terrified chauffeur, till their noses were almost touching. “Because there’s something evil in that house, and there’s no one else in this city that can put it down except for me. So, you wanna fuck up our chances of getting this thing, be my guest. But just know, no one’s going to stop it if I don’t. And, believe me, if I find out you ratted on us, you’re going to need more than just stitches. You’ll need fucking prosthetics, and a way to explain the claw and bite marks on your stumps.”

Bobby, his face inches away from Luke’s, nodded as fervently as a bobble head. “Y-y-yeah, okay. I wasn’t going to, anyways, was just, you know, just talking, man, that’s all.”

Luke straightened up. “Good.” He turned to me, the stars dancing in his eyes as he smirked. “Ready, babe?”

I smiled, accepting his offered arm. “Of course. We’ve still got a party to crash.”