Cold. His bones felt like lead bars and he couldn’t move. His breath puffed out of his nostrils in white clouds. His head was swimming and his eyes were bleary. All he could make out was his frozen breath and his shadow on an old concrete wall that was lazily swaying from side to side. His legs felt like molasses and his arms were thick wooden logs. He was bound in a chair with a heavy swatch of duck tape over his mouth.

“My God, where is Saul? I hope he’s okay! Please God, may Saul be alright!” his mind pleaded.

They had been running this morning, as always down through the park and breezing past the sleeping bums covered in wrinkled newspaper. Saul had commented on going to his parents place first this Christmas. That was fine, he liked Saul’s folks. They were very pleasant and accommodating to their son’s lifestyle. What had happened to interrupt their morning routine? They had been jogging, chatting about the holidays and looking forward to a quick breakfast at Godiva’s. Then it would be off to work. How on earth had Joel ended up here?

A high pitched screeeeech interrupted his thoughts. It was metallic and hungry. And it was approaching him. Joel struggled with the constraints but it was no use. He was trapped. But that had been his whole life hadn’t it? Trapped in a body that wasn’t his. His family didn’t understand. His father disowned his faggot son and his mother only cried. But he had found Saul and in him, Joel found a life. His shadow began to sway in larger arches on the wall. Something big was coming, he could hear it breathing. Joel felt everything that he had fought for slipping away. He saw a black shape hulking up next to his, he screamed into the tape and almost gagged. This had to be a nightmare but deep down in his primal self, Joel knew that the end was at hand. He thanked God for Saul as the monster’s shadow fell on him and knew the exact moment that his mind, thrashing around like a wounded animal, realized that the face of death was grinning manically down on him and snapped like a dry twig.

2

An unmarked police cruiser careened down route 360 at near 80 mph. The rural landscape slurred by like an abstract painting, small one family ranchers set leisurely off the road, fenced in fields that framed grazing horses, children safely at play miles away from the city. The inside of the cruiser had the faint smell of day old fast food and a large to-go cup perched precariously next to the radio. They were running with sirens for right now until they got near the perp's neighborhood.

Emily Sanderson checked the rearview mirror from the passenger seat. Her face looked puffy. It had been an early morning. Det. DeJesus arrived at her home at six in the blessed a.m. She was not an early riser, never had been and never would be. She grew up on a farm out in the rural pastures of Chester Springs, Va. Every morning on her parent’s farm had been an early one, especially when Roscoe made sure everyone was awake at 4:30. Roscoe was the rooster, and a blind rooster to boot, so the dumb bird didn’t have the manners or sense enough to wait for dawn, he screamed and protested as only a rooster can do until Mom or Daddy went out to feed him. Emily would be outside first thing, no matter how cold it was, and feeding the chickens. Daddy would already be in the barn with Mabel, the cow. And that had become the soundtrack of her childhood mornings, Mabel mooing happily.

From a farm to a police cruiser, Emily thought. That was an odd transition. She’d always thought she’d be a veterinarian. But the cold truth of it was she never had the confidence to pursue it. Interestingly, that’s how she fell into police work. She started out as a dispatcher, hiding behind the microphone. It was easy to be confident when no one was looking at you. Then dispatching led to analyst work, again hiding behind a computer suited Emily just fine.

Det. DeJesus was driving like a bat out of hell and it made the reflection of the vehicles following them appear jumpy. There was an unmarked suburban, a dark van and two other cruisers, one burgundy, one silver.

“This is the best part of the job,” Emily thought to herself. She was now the county police department's intelligence analyst. In layman's terms, she was an unsworn civilian who played detective over the computer. She used a vast array of compiled information to connect criminals to other unsolved crimes and to each other. She had developed quite a reputation for herself with other local law enforcement and most recently, with the FBI. She liked to joke that she was as good as any of the detectives on the force and she never had to leave the office. However the county’s most grisly murder spree to date had her and the rest of the department baffled. Someone was abducting 20 something white females and letting them loose in the woods only to hunt them down with a police issue 9mm. Ballistics hadn’t returned anything of note, there was nothing connecting the victims other than their skin color and gender and Emily found herself left chasing down hundreds of dead end leads. Emily snapped to when the sirens abruptly stopped and they approached a small cluster of townhouses that sat off the road. Hopefully, today’s bust would help morale and cast the department in a more favorable light, at least until the next girl was found nude, raped and shot to death in the back woods of Chesterfield County.

DeJesus drove into the quiet neighborhood without much fanfare, the suburban hung a right and then left. The two other cruisers were gone now too as DeJesus and Emily ventured deeper past the small, slightly disheveled homes. Emily could just make out the dark van which was now a street or two over. It pulled into a driveway, blocking in an old thunderbird. DeJesus applied a little pressure to the gas and they quickly swooped in to find a better vantage point. Emily saw a K-9 officer with his dog sprinting across neighboring backyards toward the house. A swat officer, dressed in workman's coveralls, nonchalantly got out of the van and made his way to the front door. Everything was timing out beautifully until Booger stepped out of his front door with a glock and shot the undercover swat officer between the eyes.

Emily’s world was slow motion. Booger disappeared back inside. DeJesus screamed into his radio for all units to converge. A heavily armored swat team plowed in through the front door. DeJesus un-holstered his weapon and left Emily alone in the sedan, shaking like a leaf. The swat team tackled a woman running toward the back door with her children. A heavy knee ground into the small of her back and her face smashed into the cheap vinyl floor as she screamed in Spanish. The children were corralled in the corner and covered by an M -16. Booger raced down the back hallway into his bedroom. He ripped open the top drawer of his dresser and pulled out his gold plated Uzi. Two burly swat officers slammed him to the ground and wrenched his arms up behind his back. Booger stared through the stinging sweat in his eyes and saw a German Shepard enter the room. Osa meant bear. And Osa was one of the biggest dogs on the force. She looked eagerly up at her master, hungrily awaiting the command to attack the bad guy. But instead she got the ‘find it’ signal and quickly went to work.

DeJesus passed Booger, who was being escorted down the cramped hallway by the two swat officers. The rank stench of musk coming from the suspect nearly overpowered the detective. He found his way into the bedroom and watched Osa go to work. The two swat officers escorted Booger out of the house and threw him in the back of the burgundy cruiser.

It took Emily three tries to successfully open the car door because of her sweaty palms. As she walked toward the house, Emily was sure her knees would buckle. There were officers attending to their fallen comrade and as Emily passed them she said a silent prayer for the man’s family. As she entered the house, Emily saw members of the swat team questioning a Latino female. She noticed a tattoo of a wolf on the woman’s left breast. A gang tat of the los lobos, the wolves. She smiled inwardly at a job well done. It had taken Emily six months to track down Juanita Sanchez. She was the sister of Juan “the red” Sanchez, leader of los lobos. With the sister’s location finally nailed down Det. DeJesus was confident he could coax Juanita to roll on her brother and his lieutenants, in effect, kill the wolves by lopping of their collective head.

Emily made her way into the bedroom in time to see Osa leaping on top of an unkempt king size bed. The big dog jumped around and barked like a deliriously happy puppy.

DeJesus shrugged his shoulders, “What the hell is she doing?”

“Come!” the officer commanded. “Sit!”

Osa did as she was told and the officer climbed on to the bed. There was a giant mirror placed directly over it on the ceiling. The officer thumbed two latches and the mirror swung down like an attic door. Emily looked at DeJesus and smiled in astonishment. The officer hauled himself up.

“It’s like the freaking North Pole up here and I don’t mean its cold either,” he said as he tossed down a brick of cocaine.

Emily knelt down and rubbed Osa’s head, “Good girl, Osa-bo!”

Osa licked Emily’s face and DeJesus smiled in spite of himself.

3

The Hunter frowned as the smell of rotting garbage oozed up from the alley below. The bricks that made up the rooftop ledge under its feet were slimy and filled with decaying cracks. It would be a shame to fall from this height wouldn't it? Just when there seemed to be a new quarry on the horizon, the Hunter would accidentally snuff itself out. No, that wouldn't happen, the Hunter had been around too long, had been too careful to have it end like that. The Hunter had its eye on someone, someone very special and very soon now they would meet. The Hunter salivated at the endless possibilities, would they fight? Would its prey run away in fear? Or would it want to play?

Endless possibilities, indeed.

The Hunter slithered over the ledge and dropped onto a rickety iron fire escape, while taking a moment to admire its reflection in a dirty window pane. Gleaming moonlit eyes sat perched upon its dripping red face, delicious. The Hunter sunk back into the pitch, back into the filth of the city to hide for just a while longer. That night, as blood flowed from the Hunter's veins and it howled in pleasure, the angular white face of its next victim floated and grimaced in its mind. It was now only a matter of time.