Revenge of the Gray Wolf
“A trade, in my favor, of course,” Bill said. He walked into the dealership to the corner pine wood desk. “My brother’s Jeep outside was traded for that car.”
Bill was like a tiger: bold, quiet, and intelligent. The Audi dealership’s top sales manager turned from his executive chair and glanced in the stranger’s direction. The buddy he was chatting with on the phone identified Bill’s voice: the finisher, and instantly ended the call.
There was silence, except that the people waiting for their car to be serviced could hear a fly flirt above the free morning croissants next to the pot of coffee: “Sorry?”
“Yes! I’m the original, the fucking finisher.”
The top sales manager noticed that the Jeep’s roof and hood were partly crushed in, and the front windshield was rippled with cracks. He tilted his gold-tinted eyeglasses carefully, fighting a spontaneous and absurd laugh that would literally end his life. It was the first Friday of the month, and he had massive commission deposits leap into his checking account, which he would split between sports betting and provocative women.
A beautiful woman, Bill’s companion, Ivory, walked in behind him. Her rare beauty and cool laugh were a welcome lifesaver. She opened her leather purse and pulled out a mascara tube while the Audi R8 shone and rotated in the center of the showroom.
She was indeed exceptionally charming, whereas Bill was creepy. The warning sirens were instant on this odd couple as the top sales manager’s thoughts, usually controlled, ordered, uncluttered, and relaxed, were ablaze. Even before the very scary man gave his name: “Oh shit, that’s Bill.” The person never spoke of, not even in the safety of the swirling orange frost of summer’s tireless sunlight.
“A simple contract,” Bill said. An enormously generous one that allows you to live in your current state. I also want the warranty with the car.”
The square lights on the ceiling danced, the pace crashing onto the large showroom’s black marble. The diamond sprinkles on the front of Ivory’s sweater ballooned her C-cup breasts into a triple D. Her graceful, fancy posture was irresistible, and her movements held the eyes of the waiting-room guests.
Ivory crossed the fully loaded black Audi and leaned beside the glossy side mirror to darken her eyeliner and lashes to the shade of the car’s paint and marble floors. She wore white leather boots and brown suede skinny pants.
Whatever this fascination was, the sales manager propped his elbows and sat far back on his executive desk. The phone rang on his line, interrupting the ghostly gloom like magic. He reached for the computer mouse instead of the handset, praying the couple would sign the contract terms with the warranty quickly after it was printed. There was both the fight and flight instinct. The desire to run and summon security. Fear had a tightened collar around his neck and an ostrich egg nested inside his throat.
“Initial here and then sign.” The sales manager of the year was panicked, but he didn’t dare look away from Bill’s dark eyes.
Ivory opened and closed the driver’s doors as the car spun on its base. The natural lamb leather felt soft beneath her body. She thought of a few artistic and gruesome ways to hurt Bill. Get him lost by using the old forgotten roads in the desertlands. Where she was free to give him pain. She twisted the tanzanite-and-diamond engagement ring, the platinum band visible, where she intended to slip the Owl Ring back on. Bill, she’d burn alive and let the vultures disembowel him in the desert, his bones melted like snow in the desert sands. Check him off as dead, like another coyote in the hot Utah hell.
“Hand the keys to your beautiful fiancé, right?”
“A test drive, eh?” Bill stared lustfully at Ivory, and he would finally have her. The sales managers gave Bill the second pair of keys, which he pulled from the top file drawer with a trembling hand. “Get me some coffee; I don’t care, dam it, if there’s cream in it,” the top sales manager said. The serviceman was just walking in with a finished work order. He mumbled and went over to the break station.
Ivory felt ill, so she squeezed her scarf around her shoulders. The colored birthmark, the size of a plum pit, on Bill’s forehead, motivated her to start his torture there. So when The Boss came looking, he’d concluded it was the Canyon Butcher and his bloody obsession for baked skin as trophies. Bill would be found chained around a road sign and left for the desert critters to take the remaining rest.
Ivory plucked a stray hair from her left eyebrow. There was a steel razor, masked and resembling a harmless skinny mascara brush. Ivory could press it deep into his jugular vein if he tried anything to escape her trap.
Bill put his arm around Ivory’s bare, healed shoulder. “No, remember, I have the solution to who killed your brother.” He signed the contract, left it on the round black table with the plaque for the top sales manager, then walked behind it and broke all five fingers on his writing hand. “Punishment is necessary, accept it or suffer a lot more.”
“Let go, Bill. The Scarlet Owl Ring.”
“Fuck the Scarlet Owl Ring?” Bill said. “By chance, you play me. I will market you in exchange for the Owl Ring for the red soldiers of the Surreal Forces.”
“What’s the plan?” Ivory said.
“Bait the Surreal Forces with bones and blood. We don’t need the Owl Ring
“How?”
“Trap the Canyon Ripper, and I’ll rule the Mountain Gorillas, Surreal Forces, and the Owl Ring. But if you are not mine.
“Enough,” Ivory said.
***
Silverback was stirring his second cup of coffee, and Nelson finished his pile of pancakes. They were at a little cafe in a city in Utah’s Rhino Horn. When the Surreal Red Forces realized the Owl Ring was gone from where they buried it, they would attack anybody, including the Utah killer and Bill. Silverback was fine with both. The coffee eased his wounded reflections.
Nelson was concerned about the boss. Silverback would tell Bill, and Ivory or not, regardless, Silverback could not shield him. Nelson drank his sugary medicine.
“What are you thinking of doing?” Silverback read aloud his thoughts.
“The Owl Ring was not meant to keep the Gray Wolf from rising from the desert fire. It’s the opposite: uncover its power, a weapon to defeat the evil in the desert,” Nelson said. “Whoever this truck driver is, he knows the Gray Wolf combined with the Owl Ring will vanquish him from the canyons.”
Silverback said, “Ivory and I were at his place for months while he was gone on a truck run outside Utah and the country. If it weren’t for your brother Bill, we’d never know he was the vicious serial killer. Silverback ate his meat omelet with a fork.
“Have an idea how the ring works yet?” Nelson asked. He took his napkin and put it on his plate.
Maybe, “But first, let’s get back home.” Silverback put a twenty on the table, and they stood up and left.
The canyons were worse in the late afternoon. The night seemed alive, hungry, and impatient; it wanted revenge stronger than the Gray Wolf. Night knew precisely how to stalk, wound, and kill like a Komodo dragon. The night had no enemy to fear; nothing yet could beat the unlimited armies of its stars. Like the Gray Wolf, it was also thirsty for revenge for being called out of its sleep.
Silverback wore the Owl Ring. Nothing could cease his success. The addiction he had to the Gray Wolf would not affect him anymore. So he prayed that Nelson had skills bigger than scuba diving, more prominent than the curse of the Bermuda Triangle.
The Gorillas wanted him to believe that Ivory had betrayed him. The truth was that he had betrayed her and deserved to face her absence. Ivory also lost her brother; Nelson lost, too; the only difference was that Bill was still more active and dangerous than the dead ghost of a brother fallen. Yet they have both been equally changed by their bad behavior.
“What’s wrong, Silverback?” Nelson asked as the medicine lowered his stomach acid but spiked his blood sugar.
“We have the Owl Ring. How do we use it to fight against this hell?” Will guilt be ours alone if we do this wrong? Will it lead us to Canyon Butcher before he moves on and remakes himself?
They returned to their rental car, and a white sheriff’s van pulled up beside them. They turned off their engines.
A detective wearing a bulletproof vest approached them. “There have been weird things happening up in the canyons. We intend to minimize that drama. You assholes, turn around.” The Utah killer needs to get in and out of those canyons; we have the FBI and our expert law enforcement tracking. You two outlaws have some ideas about how he’s been evading us, huh?”
Silverback turned to Nelson and signaled to keep his mouth shut.
The detective sighed, “Those bastard Mountain Gorillas…I am not a fool. Keep them motherfuckers away. Or I’ll put you all in cuffs and stay in one of our kind Airbnb.
“I am not interested in protecting the Mountain Gorillas. We’re going out to the Utah canyons; we heard the gossip about a grey wolf sighting, and unless this is an official roadblock.”
The detective grinned and moved away; something changed his mood.
Let the wolf take care of you, mountain gorrila skum
