was too in love with him to resist. He would push her down on the couch and pull off her panties. He would shove in his cock and there would be blood. She would cry, but he wouldn’t stop until he was ready. Then he would make her suck it and force her to swallow his first ejaculation.
The Big Tree showed him what could be, what possibilities there were if he was willing to receive this wisdom. And now, his God was calling him home to assume his rightful place. Ever since that fateful day so long ago he’d used the gift as much as he could… but he’d never felt the voice of the Big Tree, not until now . It was a quiet voice which he had to strain to hear, an itch in the back of his mind, a smell he could only vaguely place, a form of déjà vu . Colors, sounds, shapes, textures, aromas came in a flood, but still fragmented, still not fully here . It called him, he was the true son, and soon his God would walk the face of the earth again.
CHAPTER 5
“Jerry, I don’t even know where the fuck to begin.”
It was Errol, Elton Township’s mayor, mailman and sometimes Sheriff’s deputy. So far Jerry wasn’t sure if this was the most fucked up day in Elton in twenty-odd years, or whether the moment of critical mass had arrived when all the misery, ugliness, and blind misfortune of this terrible little town had taken form and was devouring it.
“We’re already on another township’s dime for the coroner for Everclear and the Polack and for…”
He stopped short and part of the shock gripped him. “And for the Rev.”
The air whistled out of Errol’s throat. “I can’t fucking believe it. The fuck are we gonna do without him?” More of a statement than a question. Bad things happen in the dogpatch between logging mills and Indian casinos, but the death of the Reverend James wasn’t one they’d planned for. There was no way to sum it up short of facing that this was the end of Elton Township. At least it was the end of hoping that somehow, someway, things could be turned around.
And if today was what the beginning of the end looked like, neither man wanted to look any further down the road. “Okay, Errol, I didn’t know that things could get worse so just go ahead and lay it on me.”
“It’s Blackie again.”
Jerry didn’t respond. He just glanced over his shoulder at the mourners filling the James’ house, spilling out into the yard. Crying, holding each other. This man meant that much to them. He was the light at the end of their tunnel, something approaching a real saint. And now he was gone.
He and Errol had flown up the road following the song of the Pack. They hadn’t bothered with pleasantries, they’d just torn ass around to the back of the house. The Pack weren’t in front but their song was loud and clear, so that must’ve meant they were in the back. Like right there in the back of the Rev’s place. But all they saw was the shaking of the bushes and trees, the Pack melting into the forest. Gone , and when they walked up to the Rev’s porch to apologize for tear-assing across his property they saw Abby’s face buried in his big chest on the couch. He wasn’t moving.
The Rev was dead.
Blackie had been there.
Watching, then howling .
Wolves don’t fucking act like that, they just don’t . And moments before that, they’d devoured a woman’s dog in front of her, reducing it to blood and fur in less than a minute.
And here’s Errol the mailman, mayor, and deputy with even more good news.
“They killed every single one of Colson’s sheep. Didn’t eat em’ – just killed em’. Apparently they did it right before dawn; somehow they spooked the sheep out of the barn, herded them across the field, and massacred them. I’m looking at thirty to forty carcasses here, Sheriff.”
Jerry looked at the mourners around him, then across empty Elton Lake to the back of the church. The coroners from two counties over were loading up Everclear and the Polack right now. They’d be