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Wolf Hunter - from Belfire Press
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Category:
Horror
In the waning days of WWII, the Nazis succeeded in creating the ultimate fighters, werewolves. Viktor Huelen escaped capture and made his way to America, where he lived for years undetected…until now.
In present day Detroit, Huelen is being blackmailed into sharing his dark gift with a group of college kids. Jack is an Ojibwa shapeshifter…
…and the only thing that stands between the werewolves and world domination.
Excerpt
Three men sat in a row of stainless steel chairs facing a mirror. There was an open seat between a scarred mountain of a man in an SS uniform, and a bear-like man who looked vaguely familiar. Huelen took the unoccupied chair and sat at attention, afraid to look into the other men’s faces. The strong smell of liquor and sweat roiled off the mountainous SS officer and his face was road mapped with scars. He did not look like someone Huelen would want to meet in a dark alleyway.
Huelen chanced a look at the other men, sizing them up. Standing almost six feet tall, he had never considered himself short before, but the muscles he had spent years building looked pitiful in comparison to the men who flanked him.
The man on the other side of Huelen looked more bear than human. His muscles rippled and bulged under his uniform shirt
“Um, sir,” Huelen said to bear-like man. “Do I know you?”
“I was in Olympics,” the bear said. “Karl Wahlsevkski,” he said and grasped Huelen’s hand. Huelen tried not to crumble as a hairy vice trapped his hand. “I was heavy-weight wrestler for Polska. I win bronze, then war. Now I wrestle bears in shows for troops.” His broad, bearded cheeks glowed with a jovial smile.
The man on the end looked more like a scientist than a soldier, perhaps it was only in comparison to The Bear and The Mountain, or the lack of a military uniform.
“Why are you here?” Huelen asked him.
“Perhaps they felt they needed brains to offset these lummoxes,” the man said. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “As we’re giving our life stories here, I guess I will give you my curriculum vitae.”
Huelen didn’t know what a lummox was, but he didn’t get the feeling it was a good term, and curriculum vitae sounded like some disease. Huelen really hoped he hadn’t been selected for a disease resistance test for some Russian plague.
“My name is Albrecht Nachtwandler,” the man said. “I have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Munich Technological Institute. I am fluent in fourteen languages. For the last five years, I have been a spy in Stalin’s Fifth Army Headquarters. And I can put a bullet through your left eye from three hundred meters in a heartbeat.”
Huelen didn’t really like this Nachtwandler guy.
The mountain slapped him across the face, so hard that Huelen was flung to the floor.
“You ask too many questions, pipsqueak,” the mountain said in a voice that boomed off the cold stone walls. “You’ll do good to learn to shut that trap.”
“But, I just—”
The man raised his fist again and Huelen fell silent. He rubbed his face and sat gingerly in the empty chair. He noticed that the man had not said anything to Nachtwandler. He was the one who had been talking. The spindly man seemed to exude an evil strength, something that even muscular bullies feared.
Huelen stared down at his cuticles, not wanting to give even the appearance of looking at the other men. He was already off to a poor start if he wanted to impress these men and show that he was worthy of being included in the group, whatever their mission was to be. He knew his marks in the Hitler Youth would mean nothing now. A marksmanship medal paled when compared to an Olympic medal or being a spy.
The lights in the room dimmed. Huelen’s attention snapped to the mirror in front. He straightened his back as the door to the room opened.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” the small man coming through the door said before Huelen could completely make him out. “I am Reichsführer Himmler.”
Himmler’s glasses glinted slightly as he stepped forward to the opening. Huelen reminded himself to breathe. He could not believe he was in the presence of the Heinrich Himmler.
Behind Himmler came four men cloaked in shadow. One of them was Herr Axmann. There was an SS officer and a doctor in a white lab coat.
“You are the best of the best,” Himmler said, “the hope of the Fatherland.” His voice was surprisingly reedy, not what Huelen expected from a man who wielded so much power.
“This mission must remain under the utmost secrecy. There is to be no drinking or smoking. And absolutely no narcotics. No fraternizing with the locals. You are to have no more contact with anyone outside; you are dead to the world. If you have family, my office will notify them with a letter and supply them with a generous stipend.
“Obergruppenführer Prutzmann will be in charge while I am gone.” The man in the black SS uniform stepped forward into the light. He nodded to the men, his face remaining firm and set.
“His word is the Führer’s word,” Himmler continued. “Follow the doctor; you will be billeted away from the other men.”
Huelen and the others followed the same doctor that had led Huelen into the chamber. Their barracks were just down the hall, a Spartan room with five cots, and little else. Huelen heard the door lock behind them.
“Why you here?” Wahlsevkski said to the mountain of a man.
“I am Luther Grutzmann,” he said with a sneer, as if everyone already knew that. “I was Hitler’s personal bodyguard from 1940 through 1942. I am an officer in the Waffen-SS.” He puffed out his already huge chest. His shirt was cut to accentuate his muscles, it would probably rip in half if he actually flexed. The roadmap of scars on his face stood out white against his flush, clean-shaven face.
“I was sent for in Poland,” Grutzmann continued, “where I was dealing with the sniveling Order Police, a bunch of weak old men, too old to be of any use to the Wehrmacht. They couldn’t handle simple extermination orders. I was supposed to carry out my mission with an Einsatzgruppen of worthless geezers. I don’t want to come here and have to deal with sniveling incompetence again.” With that last comment, he bored a hole in Huelen with his dark eyes.
Wahlsevkski stood up as if he meant to say something to the mountainous Grutzmann, but even the man who wrestled bears seemed afraid of this hard man.
The door of the cell opened. Herr Prutzmann appeared with the lab-coated doctor in tow. “This is Doctor Worklauf,” Prutzmann said, looking back at the doctor. “He will be conducting the experiment you have been selected for.”
The doctor gave each man a binder. “Memorize this information; it is vital to your mission. You will be expected to reproduce this experiment should the need arise. All the information you will require is in these binders.”
The binders were huge. They were bound in leather and smelled of fresh printer’s ink and tanned hide. Huelen flipped his open. The pages insides were full of tables and diagrams, and pages of close-typed text.
“Read this tonight,” Dr. Worklauf said. “We have much to go over tomorrow. We can’t afford to spend time coddling you. You were chosen because you were the best, which is how we will treat you.” The doctor turned and scuffed out.
The other men took their books to the beds and began to read in earnest. Grutzmann quickly grew bored and began flipping through. Karl read with the determination of a child painting, the tip of his tongue clenched between his large teeth. Huelen figured he had better get to reading himself. He lay down on the stone floor in the corner of the room, as far away from the other men’s wrath as possible. The bare bulbs above cast shadows over the page. The stone underneath him felt cool and slightly damp, even though there was no actual moisture on it.
Huelen’s head swam as he tried to cram all the information into his skull. There were instructions on how to make an involved audio device that went far over Huelen’s head. There was a salve made with ingredients he couldn’t pronounce. Freud had written a section about the animal inside of man.
One of the only things he did understand was a girdle made from the fur of a wolf. This was something that Huelen could imagine, simple and easy to make.
He read back over the confusing sections, trying to get hold of what it all meant. His head pounded, his eyes hurt. He got up, stumbled to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
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