"A woman," Leon said. "She came to the bayou."
"And?"
"She asked me if I wanted to be a real loup-garou. She gave me something to drink."
"What did she look like?"
Leon described the woman.
Remo glanced at Chiun, who stood impassively watching. Chiun nodded and asked, "What about her arm, mongrel?"
Leon turned his head in surprise. "Her arm?" Then some sort of understanding opened on his face. "Her arm. It was smooth. It had skin like a baby's arm."
Remo breathed. There was the evidence. That was the kind of unusual detail that proved it. Judith White had lost her arm when she first encountered Remo. But by the time they had met the last time, she had managed to grow it back. The skin on the new arm was pink and new. "Even Smitty can't deny it was Dr. Judy."
Chiun nodded.
"How many others did she make?" Remo demanded.
"I made them. She ran away. I was too strong and she became afraid."
"How many?"
Remo knew the question wouldn't be answered when his hand detected the surge of impulses in the wolf man's muscles. Leon twisted violently to free himself-and Remo let him do it. One taloned claw slashed at him and Remo slapped it aside, shattering the bones. The other hand groped for him, weak and wounded, and Remo squeezed it into pulp.
The wolf man howled with rage and pain, and his eyes flashed to the left and right.
The wolf man's sanity had fled him.
He rose to his knees without warning, with the power of the insane, the speed of an unnatural creature and the adrenaline rush of a dying lunatic. His teeth gnashed at Remo's throat with dizzying speed.
Remo met the face full of fangs with his own fist, thrusting his hand into the wolf man's maw. The jaw full of fangs disintegrated. The back of his shaggy neck exploded.
Then Remo extracted the arm fast. But not fast enough to keep it from getting covered in blood and gore.
The loup-garou of Louisiana wavered. He was still alive and gagging on his own teeth and blood. He struggled, amazingly, to get to his feet. Remo sneered. "Forget about it. You can't even bite my legs off."
Angry breath wheezed out of the werewolf's bloody throat.
"You gonna huff and puff and blow my house in?" Remo demanded. "Not this house, Leon." He struck hard and fast, his palm crushing the wolf man's skull with his palm, and Leon collapsed like a ton of bricks.
Incredibly, he was still alive, still moving weakly.
"No wonder Dr. Judy was scared of this guy," Remo said, "Whatever she gave him, it was kick ass."
Then the gurgle of death rattled out of the throat of the beast-man. The great, hairy brute went limp. "Is he really dead?" It was Aurelia, without her pistol, stepping tentatively in Remo's direction.
Remo nodded. "He's dead. And too ugly even for a rug."
Chapter 19
"Hey, Big Crawdaddy."
Armand Fortier awoke in a panic. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. There was someone in his cell!
"Be cool, Armand. I just need to talk to you for a little old minute."
Now he saw the shape of the man. It sure the hell wasn't the big black guard. It was-
The hand was removed from his mouth. "Keep it down now, will you?"
"You're the one who came to visit me last week!" Armand accused.
"Oooo, eee. I guarantee that's me," said the Reigning Master of Sinanju.
"How did you get in here?"
"That doesn't matter. I just wanted to tell you that I came to wrap up some loose ends," Remo Williams explained.
"What loose ends?" Armand Fortier looked around wildly for some sort of an explanation. Sure enough, he was in his cell, in the middle of the night, just where he thought he was. The door to his cell was closed. The penitentiary was silent and lit only by the nighttime lights. Everything was as expected, except for the man in the cell with him.
"You see," the stranger was telling him, "I killed old Leon the loup-garou."
Fortier glared at him. "You killed Leon?"
"But one of Leon's pups took out old Merle before I got there."
"Merle's dead?"
"Also, about ten of your guys bought it tonight."
"No way-!"
Armand Fortier found himself paralyzed. The stranger was holding him by the neck.
"I asked you to be quiet, now, didn't I, Big Crawdaddy," Remo said. "Let me ask you this. I just snuck into a federal penitentiary in the middle of the night. Why would I lie to you about the other stuff?"
Fortier's eyes were wild.
"It's true. I guarantee." Fortier tried to nod, but he couldn't.
"There are a few loose ends, though," Remo explained in a reasonable, quiet voice. "A few wolves running around in the bayou. I don't know if we'll ever find them all. And then there's you. You, I knew right where to find."
Fortier was confused.
"Got to tie up those loose ends," Remo Williams said.
Then he did. Literally.
Chapter 20
The sour face of Dr. Harold W. Smith was more pinched than usual.
"You didn't have to knot him up like that."
"Yes, I did," Remo answered.
"He was still alive when they found him, you know," Smith added. "Paralyzed and mute, but conscious. They said his legs and arm bones had been broken in dozens of places."
"Had to do that," Remo said reasonably. "Had to make him all floppy in order to make the knots. You know, the little fox goes through the hole?"
Dr. Smith sighed. Chiun stood impassively at the corner of the desk. Mark Howard, in the other chair, added, "Fortier died while they were trying to untie him."
"Shame," Remo said, and found some interesting bird droppings on Smith's window to look at. "They left him like that. I suppose the coroner will have a go at undoing him," Smith said.
"They should leave him in his present state," Chiun observed. "He would fit most conveniently in a garbage sack."
Remo smiled while Smith ignored the remark. "Louisiana state police are working on another case, involving several wealthy sportsmen who were found dead in the bayou country, shortly after your encounter with the so-called werewolf. One of them turned out to be a candidate for governor, an Elmo Breen. The others were presumably his friends, perhaps contributors to his campaign. One member of the party-Breen's campaign manager, in fact-is still missing. The party's hunting guide survived and told authorities that 'wild dogs' had attacked the camp. I would assume they'll try to pin the tragedy on Leon Grosvenor, whether he was involved or not."
"Feds see any wolves in the area?" Remo asked.
"No," Mark Howard answered. "Did you?"
"Not so much as moldy dog biscuit or a mis placed chew toy," Remo said. "We managed to convince some of the locals to take us to the hermit's shack this morning and the wolves had been gone for hours. They knew their pals weren't coming back, and they knew it wasn't safe to stick around."
"Any idea where they went?" Howard asked. "They covered their tracks."
Smith said, "Excuse me?"
"They sought to confuse the trail, 0 Emperor," Chiun said in a pleasant singsong. "They used every trick to obfuscate and erase the evidence of their passing."
"Surely they didn't consciously try to obliterate their trail?" Smith said.
"They were people, Smitty," Remo said. "Just deal with it, would you? They talked. That means they could think."
"I suppose so," Smith said.
"We followed the path out of the bayou to a state highway," Remo reported.
"Remo lost the trail at a service station," Chiun announced casually.
"We both lost it," Remo said. "They hitched a ride. They must have stowed away on some truck. It was three, four hours before we reached the spot. Where they went from there? West. Maybe." He shrugged. "What about the others at the big Godfest?"
Smith looked down at his hidden computer screen. "Aside from Grosvenor and the several gunmen who arrived with Bettencourt, three persons are reported dead, with seventeen injured in various degrees."