Fire Burn, Cauldron Bubble
by Nicholas Hall
Chapter 9
Copyright© 2018 – Nicholas Hall
Dead Men tell no Tales
"The first blow is half the battle"
(Oliver Goldsmith)
The unexpected gunshot was immediately followed by a volley of pistol and rifle fire from the engaging law enforcement officers, all directed toward the cabin and the man on the porch. Perhaps due to darkness, the element of surprise and indecision on the part of the officers, over-eagerness, who knows, if any hit the man on the porch it didn't stop him from screeching, "It's the fucking cops!" as he returned fire and staggered inside the cabin door. It slammed shut, windows were broken clear of glass, and the suspects inside engaged the attacking officers. The gunfire from the cabin was directed at the muzzle flashes, flicking, fluttering like fire-flies in a spring night, only dangerous, biting, stinging, and deadly, from the weapons of the law enforcement officers.
"Who the hell fired that shot?" muttered Jerry to a deputy next to him as the firefight intensified, now from at least three sides of the cabin as the men inside fired through windows at the officers. The rear of the cabin seemed to be the most lightly defended and attacked, although he did have some assets there loosing sporadic fire in the direction of the building, just in case those inside tried to escape in that direction. A deadly barrage of armor piercing and "supervels" hammered the sides of the cabin with a steady tattoo of smacking sounds and wood being torn away in splintered chunks.
The three wolves at the top of the small rise to the rear of the cabin, hunkered down behind a large deadfall to keep them relatively safe from bullets, well back from the clearing, yet close enough for their extraordinary eyesight to take in the battle below. Their partial view, looking through the large branches or over the trunk of the deadfall, enabled them to observe the three county officers in front of them directing their fire toward the cabin. The officers were dressed in tactical winter gear and in body armor in case they'd take a round from the cabin and concentrating what fire they let loose on a small window in the rear of the cabin and a back door.
The firing stopped from the cabin, the law enforcement officers surrounding the cabin ceased fire as well. The three wolves' ears perked up as they picked up the soft, muted sounds of instructions given to the officers through the ear pieces of their two-way radios.
They watched as a six-officer S.W.A.T. team, shields extended to the front of each officer and weapons at the ready, cautiously advanced toward the front of the cabin. Taking up defensive, yet offensive positions near the door, but out of reach of any weapon from the inside, an officer shouted for the people inside to surrender, toss out their weapons, and come out with their hands up. A shot rang out from inside, two S.W.A.T. members quickly fired several rounds of tear gas in through a window, and they waited. Another shot rang out and one man tossed in several "flash-bang" grenades to blind and stun those inside. When the last grenade exploded, it set off another, more dramatic, intense, destructive fiery blast inside the structure causing the officers to fall back as the building was engulfed in black, roiling, smoke brought about by the dancing, growling, snapping red and yellow tongues of fire of substances unknown inside, engulfing all within and starting to spread outside, swooping and snorting through the broken windows.
"Didn't expect this to happen, did you, Jessie?" Tyler asked as the three of them watched the fire spread.
"Not a fucking clue, but I think it'll all work out."
Jerry quickly radioed dispatch for fire equipment, a "Haz-Mat" team, and rescue vehicles, although he doubted anyone would survive or the structure would be saved, so he asked dispatch to notify the county coroner's officer their services would be needed. Several other explosions emanated from the interior of the cabin and Jerry ordered his assets back and away from the drifting smoke as it wafted into the air and up toward the small rise behind the cabin. The three officers quickly abandoned their post, as ordered, and moved to one side of the cabin, well away from any danger.
In the confusion, smoke, fire, and noise, the officers failed to notice one suspect slide out the rear door and crawl slowly, deliberately, but in a grasping, gasping, disjointed, wounded manner toward the slight rise and the deadfall at the top.
John, mortally wounded, bleeding profusely, unable to stand and walk, flashing, dancing light of the fire behind him, slithered across the clearing, dragging his feet, clutching ahead with hands cold from the winter temperature and his increasing loss of blood, and started up the small rise, seeking refuge behind the deadfall beckoning him.
"Who is it?" Jase asked.
"It's John; the one we met at the cabin."
"Why's he coming up here?"
"I'm calling him, but he doesn't know it."
John's mind, muddled by the effects of his life force slowly draining from him, drove him forward, as if struggling to stay alive until he reached whatever it was he was supposed to see. Reaching the deadfall, he lay resting momentarily, his life's blood oozing from his body from more than one gunshot wound. Opening his eyes, he saw a naked teen boy. The boy had a huge cock, larger than the two boys he remembered from the day before. Strangely, somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought there'd been three, but every time he tried to picture the third boy, he was confronted with a scene quite horrible and frightening.
"Hello, John," Jessie said quietly. "My boyfriends and I watched you crawl up the hill. If you felt better, I'd bet you'd want to fuck us."
Jase and Tyler quickly stepped from behind the deadfall, naked, young bodies svelte, large cocks and balls glimmering and shining as they wobbled, jiggled, and bounced, illuminated in the light of the fire below in the clearing as the two walked toward him. The three teens were a boy lover's dream or, in John's case, nightmare.
John moaned in pain, pain from the mortal wounds and pain from the inability to act on his base desires.
"You've been a very naughty boy, John," Jessie scolded.
John gasped, trying to explain. "They were dying so I just hurried it along. Didn't want them to burn alive or, if they were saved by the cops, telling them anything."
"That explains the two shots we heard from inside the cabin," Tyler said.
"Oh, yes," Jessie went on, "but you did more, didn't you John? What you sold has killed, maimed, and destroyed, all for a few dollars. On top of that, you lured young boys to your cock with promises to pay them with ample supplies of drugs, and fucked them and fucked them, until you were satisfied. You didn't care they screamed or bled or begged you to stop. No, you then had them fucking and sucking each other while you either jacked-off or fucked your cum up another young boys ass, didn't you? But when boys weren't around, you watched the videos you took and wanked your cock to them, right?"
John, weak from his injuries, had no energy left in him to either admit or deny, but he knew the young teen was right, wondering how the hell he knew?
"If you dare, John, you better say your prayers. Simply say, 'now I lay me down to sleep because the monster in my mind is going to carry me to hell.'"
Jessie, Tyler, and Jase shifted into huge snarling, teeth baring, aggressive wolves, and advanced on him. As Jessie's wolf approached, John saw the large wolf he envisioned each time he tried to picture the third boy he thought was at the encounter in the cabin the day before. The wolf he saw in his mind, now in front of him, always had its mouth, with its large teeth, holding his cock in its mouth, ready to rip cock and balls from his body.
John never felt the end of his life happen!
Jessie's, Jase's, and Tyler's wolves began brushing away their tracks between John's lifeless body and the deadfall. They settled back down behind it and continued to watch the action below as fire equipment, a hazmat team, and rescue units descended on the scene. To the casual observer, the area they now occupied would appear as if some wild creature bedded down there and was frightened away by all of the noise. There soon would be many human tracks near the body, obliterating most of not all evidence of the wolves' presence, except, there'd be some marks on the body.
Watching, Jessie thought it might be advisable to let Jerry know of John's body.
"Jerry, you're missing one. He's behind the cabin up the small rise just in front of the deadfall. Don't worry, he won't be going anywhere."
"I thought you might have a hand in all of this. I assume Jase and Tyler are there as well. Anyone else with you?"
"Just a few of us," Rick replied from somewhere behind Jerry.
"Why?"
"Just to make sure none got away," Mike answered somewhere to Jerry's left.
"Anyone notice where the first shot came from?"
"Off to your right side," Patrick answered, "not far from me."
"Okay, guys!" Jase ordered. "Time for us to leave!"
It was well into daylight before Jerry and a couple of members of his task force embarked on the brief, but somewhat difficult trek up the small incline. They noticed where the members of the attack force were stationed and the bloody trail someone else made crawling up the hill. One of the deputies, looking ahead, spotted something in the snow just in front of a large deadfall some distance from where the other deputies had been stationed.
Jerry waited for the fire departments to extinguish the flames and cool the smoldering embers, the coroner to complete his grisly task of removing the three bodies found in the cabin in the cabin, and for one group of lab technicians to pour over the contents of the two SUV's while another group pawed and sorted through the warm, charred remains of the cabin. The SUV" contained several bags of money, boxes of pills, powder, several small bundles of marijuana, and some guns. There were pistols, shotguns, and two semi-automatic rifles. The rifles were equipped with "bump-stock" devices converting the rifles to almost automatic fire. Jerry decided there were some in the cabin as well, which accounted for the rapid and constant fire from within toward law enforcement.
Strangely, the DEA and Border Patrol officers remained quiet and let the investigation carry on without their assistance.
"Maybe we pissed them off," murmured one of the deputies to Jerry in passing, "or maybe they fucked up royally and are trying hard not to draw too much attention to themselves."
The only assets to Jerry's right before and during the attack were a small squad of his own officers, but farther away were the federal officers. He was almost positive none of his crew fired the first shot, if Patrick's observation was correct, but he'd certain investigate it carefully. If not his men, then it had to be the Feds.
"For what purpose?" he asked himself.
Jerry knew from his own experience as a werewolf, as they approached the deadfall and the body the deputy spotted, it'd b e difficult to locate any evidence of the teens. They'd fade back, disappear into the darkness, and re-emerge as humans, leaving others unaware of their dual lives. He'd used the excuse he wanted to check the entire area to recruit the two deputies with him.
They stood, looking at the bloody, limp body in the snow.
"Looks like one of them tried to get away and by the bloody trail made it this far before dying," Jerry concluded. "We'll have forensics and the coroner come up and work the scene, " he added as he walked around, creating human footprints and disturbance.
"It almost looks as if he really thrashed around as he died," a deputy observed.
"Yeah, it does," Jerry agreed as he continued to walk about, helping to disguise the area the teens had brushed their tracks away.
"Almost looks like some wild critter chewed on him," grimaced the other deputy, getting a closer look at the body.
Walking over to the deadfall, Jerry summoned the others to it, noting, "Looks like whatever it may have been, was bedded down here and was frightened by all of the noise, hunkered down, and maybe attacked when it saw the man crawling up the hill."
The others agreed, but made no more of it.
The Averill Creek Pack rendezvoused at Jessie's cabin where their clothes were before they shifted. The general discussion centered around the success of the mission, although they knew well the dealers they'd help eliminate would be replaced, only it'd take a little more time to build it up again.
"Maybe," Jessie suggested, "as word gets around it might stop some of our schoolmates from starting in, although I doubt it."
Rather than spend the rest of the night at the cabin, all of them went to their own homes. They had to be in school in the morning and morning was only four or so hours away. Their escapades this night was secret and would remain so from all humans except Eric and Evan.
Sipping his hot chocolate and nibbling on the last of his donuts, Jessie smiled triumphantly and confidently at Eric and Evan, seated at the small table overlooking the parking lot of The Pelican café. Their breakfast meeting, to those around them, wasn't unlike many others they'd spent over the years, enjoying each other's company, and offering what seemed to be mentorship and friendship to Jessie Sutton. This meeting, however, was quite different. It was a meeting to discuss the event the night before and evaluate the success or failure of it.
"Couldn't get much sleep last night could we Evan?" Eric noted to his lover and partner.
"Well, I definitely slept better than you," he laughed in response. "You seemed to settle down once Jessie sent you the text message letting you know all was well."
"So, Jessie," Eric asked, eyebrows raised in questioning and anticipation, "did it all go as we planned?"
"Pretty much, although there were a couple of surprises."
Jessie described the premature shot warning the guys inside, the ensuing gun battle, the use of tear gas, the "flash-bang" grenades, and the explosion from within. He'd assumed the drug dealers either had the place rigged to blow up and burn when they left or they had some other materials inside which ignited when one of the grenades exploded near it.
"Maybe it was one of the tear gas canisters," Evan offered. "They can burn pretty hot."
"Either way, whatever it was," Jessie acknowledged, "it set the place ablaze. The guys inside really didn't have a chance."
Eric and Evan listened carefully as Jessie described the man known as "John" crawled from the cabin, reached the deadfall, and explained how he'd killed two of the three men remaining alive in the cabin.
"How did he know to come up there?" Eric asked.
"When I was with him on Saturday, I left him with a number of post-hypnotic instructions. One of them, just in case he would escape during the raid, was to listen to my voice in his head and come to me. He had no idea why but would do so. Evidently it worked pretty well. He was damned near dead when he got there. He didn't live much longer after he encountered us. John didn't die a pleasant death."
"Just as well," Eric noted, "he was one nasty son-of-a-bitch."
"Speaking of nasty," he continued, "did you take care of those items you took from the cabin on Saturday?"
Jessie nodded; "Melted them all down, in a pit fire at the cabin last night, into a couple of chunks of metal and tars, I'll dump them down outhouse holes I know of near a couple of hunting cabins soon as I get a chance. Don't worry, no one can decipher or retrieve a thing from them, if Jase and Tyler are correct and I have no reason to doubt their knowledge how to destroy computer hard drives and discs."
While Rick and Rob were busy facilitating John's fantasies, Jessie was busy exploring the cabin. He spotted a video camera and wondered if John was making use of it while he fucked and sucked underage boys. One of the things he attended to when he was alone with John after Rick and Rob went outside before they left, was to have John show him where he stashed any recordings of his sexual activities. They were located, Jessie confiscated them, packed the many external hard drives, flash drives, and compact discs away in his backpack, and to make certain he had them all, took John's laptop as well. It was just as well, since there were thousands of images and videos on it as well, all images were of naked boys with boys, boys with men, and John with many as well. Jessie thought at first of turning them over to Jerry but there were many images and videos of some of the local boys as well. After visiting with Eric, he decided to destroy them, the laptop as well.
"Some archeologist someday, trying to discover the secrets of our civilization, will dig into those shit holes and determine we must have eaten metal and was unable to digest it since we shit such big metal turds."
"Well," Eric concluded, "at least this particular batch of drug dealers is eliminated and some of our local boys are protected. As long as no one ever knows about it, we'll be fine. The asshole pervert who raped, sodomized, and de-humanized those poor boys is no longer with us."
"Yeah," Evan added, "dead men tell no tales."
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