The Judah Black Novels: Boxed Set of books 1-3

by E. A. Copen

  It took a while, but I eventually got my head back. The cold water helped. So did brushing my teeth again and cleaning off my face with a rag. My shirt was wet, so I took it off and searched through one of the shirts hanging on the towel rack in there for one that would be comfortable enough to wear and threw it on. When I wandered back out to the main part of the house, Sal was standing at the door, arguing with Quincy. “No, you can't.”

  “It's police business, bow bender. Step aside. Don't make me get out the silver.”

  “It's all right,” I told Sal. He would have heard me coming up the hall, though he didn't turn to acknowledge me. “I called him.” Sal stepped aside.

  Quincy swaggered in, adjusting the collar of his shirt. “Tindall didn't tell me you had company.” He took a few steps forward before his eyes fell on my box. “That the tongue?”

  “Hear anything about the Summers yet?”

  Quincy refused to meet my eyes. That's when I knew. I swallowed the tightening lump in my throat. “Was it just Donald?”

  “Might take awhile before we know for sure. There was a lot of pieces, according to dispatch,” said Quincy, staring at his shoes.

  My heart ached. I felt my chin start to shake and my hands sweat. I pushed the thought and feelings of self-pity and guilt away. They wouldn't help me now. I had to look at this through the eyes of a BSI agent, through my training. Forget that I was a mother, that they had threatened me and my son, too. Forget that, if I hadn't knocked on Donald's door this afternoon, he would be watching TV with his wife. He would be alive. This was my fault. My fault.

  I grabbed the box and held it out to Quincy. “Take it.”

  He took it and didn't say anything about the way my hands were shaking. “You sure you don't want someone to watch your back, Black? You're awfully far out, near the edge of the reservation. Wouldn't be a quick drive if dispatch called it in.”

  “I'll be in the company of a pack of werewolves tonight,” I said numbly. “If I'm not safe there, none of your officers will do me any good.”

  Quincy nodded and lifted the box. “Everything in here? Packaging and everything, huh?” I took a deep breath and nodded. “I'll ship it to the lab after my report and keep you updated.”

  “Just take it.” I raised my eyes from the floor between us to look at him. I hadn't meant to look down. I didn't want him to see how angry I was. If he saw, he might want to bring me in before I killed someone. The truth was, though, that I wasn't angry at anyone but myself. People had died because of my carelessness, innocent people. I wasn't going to let it happen again. “And you and Tindall go over that scene with a fine-toothed comb. Even if you don't think it's important, I want to hear about it, you hear me? No more games. Now, get out of my house.”

  “You, uh, want to come out to the scene? Maybe you'll do a better job yourself, eh?”

  Sal put a hand on Quincy's shoulder. “You heard the lady. She told you to beat it.”

  “All right, all right. You don't have to tell me twice. Just trying to cooperate with the feds.” Quincy grumbled all the way to the door.

  I bolted it behind him and leaned my forehead against it. Sal had probably learned enough between Hunter and me and the smells in the kitchen to guess what had happened. I could feel his sympathetic eyes crawling on me and wished he'd go away. If I didn't need so badly to get help for my son, if I wasn't sure Tindall would come check up on me if I stayed put for the night, I wouldn't have gone out. But I'd given my word. That sort of thing was important and I was going to stick to it.

  “You want to sit?” Sal asked.

  “Will it make us late?”

  “Nope.”

  I nodded and pushed away from the door. Eventually, I found my way to the sofa in the living room and sat there with my gun on the coffee table, resting on a pile of video game cheat codes. Sal went into my kitchen and I heard him moving things around in the fridge. I didn't care what he was doing. Donald and his wife were dead, his wife, who I hadn't even met. She'd paid the price for his cooperation. Dammit. That was my fault, too.

  I looked up and saw Sal offering me a coffee cup. I seized it and sipped from it over-zealously only to find he hadn't filled it with coffee. He'd dug out my bottle of scotch and insulted it with a pair of ice cubes. Didn't matter to me. It was wet and comforting so down the hatch it went. Sal studied me closely in silence after taking a seat in the old rocking chair off to the side of the sofa. He was going to say it wasn't my fault, probably. The bad guys did it. While that was all true and good, it wasn't going to make one lick of difference to me who was at fault. The blame I could deal with. I'd shrug it on like a weighted vest every day until I tracked the bastard responsible down and hung him out to dry by the dark and curlies. Donald and Teagan Summers would never have that chance. They hadn't even gotten their closure before they died.

  “You know,” Sal started, rocking back on the heels of his boots. “When I was on my first tour, I got assigned to this unit with another Indian guy. Of course, he was Indian in the other other sense of the word, meaning his parents were from India. I never learned to pronounce his name. None of us could. We called him Taj. We picked on him a lot because he was small but Taj was the best shot in the whole unit, present company excluded. I was technically a non-combatant, as a medic. Anyway, about two months into the tour, we were on a convoy, moving some classified something or other from one base to another. We were way out in the desert. In Iraq, all the deserts look the same. Sand everywhere. If you got lost out there, you could go thirty, forty miles in any direction before you found a camel, let alone a city. We were pretty damn far in. And Taj, he was short. I mean short, like almost didn't make it to basic ‘cause he was so short.” He laughed to himself. “Where was I?”

  “Convoy in the desert.”

  “Right. Anyway, the roads aren't so good out there. We got lost as shit and had to keep calling to get our coordinates straight because Charlie's scramblers turned our GPS into a fancy coaster. Whenever we did that, we had to stop and wait for a while. Taj wandered off to take a piss once while we stopped and didn't come back so I went to see what was keeping him. I found him standing on the top of a big cliff, looking down into a pool of the bluest water I'd ever seen. I asked him what he was doing out there. You know what he said?” I shook my head. “In his very best Tanto English, Taj said, 'Small man take-um big piss.' I laughed so hard I swear to God I don't know how we didn’t get ourselves shot to bits.”

  I chuckled a little at his story, despite myself. I thought he'd told me the story to make me feel better. After all, he was laughing too. But his face and voice darkened and he went on.

  “The next day, on our way back to the assigned position, Taj got in the front transport while I got in the one behind him and stayed in the rear. We hit an IED. Blew Taj one way and me the other. I remember having to crawl through part of him to get to the rest. Poor Taj, though, didn't even know. He kept complaining his legs were cold. I gave him something for the pain and tried to put back together what I could but it was no good. There was no fixing Taj. Eventually, when the shock started to wear off, even Taj knew that. He also knew it was going to be a good, long while before he went and he didn't want to go slow and in pain.”

  Sal paused for a minute to scratch his chin and stare at the floor. “A lot of people tell stories about the men they kill, the first ones, how they stay with you forever. Taj was mine.”

  I held my watered down cup of scotch to Sal who took it, swallowed some and handed it back. “I don't know if anyone ever got the towel head bastard that shot Taj. War doesn't deal death equally. It isn't fair. Make no mistake this is a war. This asshole, whoever he is, has declared war on us and our families and he isn't going to stop until we make him.”

  I shook my head. “How do I make something like this right?”

  “You don't. You make it stop and you do it by whatever means necessary. Whatever this is isn't going to stop with the Summers. They're going to come for you if you keep this
up. I just wanted to say that no one's going to think less of you if you walk away now. We all understand. Hell, we have to live here. You don't.”

  I stared down into the last of my drink. “What did you say to Hunter? He looked pretty down.”

  “I told him not to leave you alone when you're worried sick about him already. He thinks you got some bad meat. No one's going to tell him different if you don't.”

  “You were hanging around all day?”

  “Yup,” said Sal. “Been working on my deck.”

  “See anyone come or go?”

  “Whoever delivered that box, Judah, must have come while I was in the can or taking a water break. I didn't see anyone.”

  I don't know why but that was oddly comforting. If he hadn't seen them, Hunter probably hadn't either. It meant that whoever had dropped the box off didn't hang around long enough to be noticed. I downed the rest of the drink and then placed the cup on the coffee table, drawing the back of my sleeve across my mouth. “Well, Tonto. We might as well hit the road. Don't want to keep Chanter waiting. That is, if you still don't mind us tagging along?”

  Sal crossed his arms dramatically. “Hmm. Kimosabe take-um papoose to iron horse. Tanto call Big Chief. Tell-um we be late. Then, we stop and get-um tobacco. Gift for angry Big Chief.”

  It was uncanny how well Sal could pull off Tonto. I couldn't help but laugh. While none of that brought the Summers back, it kept me from sinking into a spiraling fit of self-loathing and guilt. It gave me perspective. “Thanks,” I said, standing. “I mean it.”

  “Don't thank me,” Sal said pulling out his cell. “Get the bastard.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chanter did not live on the reservation but on a large plot of desert outside of it. He was close enough as the crow flies that, on a clear day in a fast walk, we could have walked there inside an hour. Being that it was technically outside of the approved grounds, however, meant that we had to pass through a checkpoint to get there.

  Like the fence that intermittently separated the United States from Mexico, the one that surrounded the reservation had been constructed of an amalgamation of materials. Everything from wood slats to chain link to barbed wire stood at some point along the border, stretched between cement towers. Sometimes, the towers beyond the road were manned and sometimes they weren't. The ones on the main road in and out of the reservation were staffed at all times. The government argued that their men were there to keep humans out rather than supernaturals in but the action worked both ways. When Sal, Hunter and I exited the reservation, we had to show our identification, state our business and give an approximate date and time of return. When Sal handed over his driver's license, they harassed him about the picture but let us through without insisting that he get out of the car. The border patrol agents gave mine back to me without even glancing at it.

  “Racist bastards,” Sal grunted as he tucked his wallet away and waited for them to raise the gate to let us through.

  “You accusing them of hating werewolves or Indians?” I asked.

  Sal grinned at me and drove on.

  Just down from the main road out of the reservation, a rusty metal arch marked the turnoff to some kind of ranch. Sal took it and slowed as the pavement gave way to a well-worn dusty path lined on either side by cacti and pathetic little trees that would only have been as tall as me. Still, they were the first splash of color I'd seen in the desert and I marveled at them as if they were miracles. A little further down the road, we passed a house. It was a run down, dusty hacienda of surprising size, built once for lavish entertaining. Now, the desert had reclaimed most of it, growing in vines and flowering cacti right up to the roof. Some of the white walls were crumbling while others stood, faces bleached, against the dry heat of the sun. When we drove past the ruins, I couldn't help but glance over and wonder what kind of person had once built such a place and why it had fallen into such disrepair.

  Chanter's abode, Sal informed me, was only a few hundred yards behind the hacienda. It was a much simpler place, built of stone and treated wood, just big enough to have housed two bedrooms. The front porch held two ancient looking rocking chairs. A dusty replica of the truck we were in waited in the driveway with the tailgate down. Alongside it sat a sky blue hybrid with a bumper sticker that read: WEREWOLVES ARE PEOPLE TOO and advertised a website for werewolf suicide prevention.

  As soon as we got out of the truck, the screen door slammed and Chanter stepped out, shirtless and shoeless, a red, white and blue bandana tied around his head. He shot me a look of curiosity and then gave a heavy glance to my son. I thought maybe he would come over to us and offer a greeting like most normal folks would do but Chanter was a werewolf. They don't exactly do normal. He stood casually on his porch and waited for us to approach him.

  Sal stopped short of stepping foot on the porch, lowering his head and tucking his shoulders in a way that had to mean something. Then, he said something in a language that definitely wasn't English. Though the tone was soft and relaxed, I somehow got the impression that the exchange of words was important enough that they'd been practiced. Chanter's reply came back more casual, and he waved Sal on into the house. I moved as if to follow but quickly found Chanter standing in my way. “You, I didn't invite in. Not yet.” He looked down at Hunter who rolled his shoulders and stood up straight suddenly. “This is your boy?”

  Chanter's tone was neutral but edging toward cautious. I wished I could tell whether it was me or Hunter that made him tread lightly. “Hunter,” I said and put my hands on Hunter's shoulders. “Hunter, this is Chanter Silvermoon. He's in charge of the werewolves here.” I hoped my introduction made it clear enough to Hunter that Chanter was someone that automatically deserved a little respect. The last thing we needed to do was piss off someone like Chanter Silvermoon.

  Hunter cocked his head to the side slightly. “If you're their leader, how come you live all the way out here?”

  Chanter chuckled. “Hunter is not your real name, is it boy? Did you choose it or did someone pick this one for you?”

  Hunter raised his chin with pride. “I picked it.”

  Chanter squatted down but made an effort to keep his head above Hunter's in height. “It's a good name. Very strong. Tell me, who was your father, Hunter?”

  Hunter looked up at me, unsure. “Go on. Answer him,” I urged, though it almost hurt me to do it. We didn't talk about Alex, Hunter and I. He'd asked once and only once and I sat him down to tell him everything I thought he needed to know. Everything except that Alex had been a werewolf.

  “Alex Gale. He died before I was born.”

  A new wrinkle spread through Chanter's forehead as he repeated the name. His next statement made me start to sweat. “Your father was a werewolf, Hunter. Do you know what that means?” Hunter swallowed and started to nod but then decided to shake his head. “It means you've the potential to become one as well.” Chanter paused as if measuring Hunter's response but Hunter stood still as stone. “How do you feel right now? Come on, now. No wrong answers. I'll know if you're lying to me, boy.”

  I felt Hunter's shoulders tense under my hands. “Mad.”

  “And who is that anger directed at?”

  Hunter squirmed a little before answering. “I don't know. Everyone, I guess.”

  Chanter stood back up and grunted something that sounded like approval to me. “Honest to a fault.”

  “There's no shame in honesty,” I told him.

  “No, I suppose not.” The silence hung between us, heavy as a wet blanket. “Tonight,” started Chanter at last. “You will both be guests in my house. You will see first-hand some of what it means to be what we are and then you may decide how you feel about it. I will warn you both once. Step lightly. Assume nothing. Speak with care. There is a lot of tension here tonight and Saloso has seen fit to deliver me more.” He rubbed his chin and frowned. “Valentino will not be pleased to see you. Either of you. Do not push him, whatever you do. This is not the time and place for your
investigation.” Then, he turned slowly and opened the screen door, gesturing for us to come in. “Go in, then. There are cartoons on the television.”

  Some modern revival of Scooby-Doo was on the TV. Mismatched but comfortable furniture lined the walls of the room, giving the space more seating room than standing room. The only other person in the room was a stick of a young man who was passed out on the sofa with a comic book over his face. Chanter rolled his eyes and went over to nudge him with his foot. “Wake up, Ed.”

  Ed pulled the magazine down off his face and groaned as if he were dying of being awake. “Ungh... Is it five o'clock already?”

  “It's going on six.”

  Chanter crossed his arms and waited while Ed unfolded himself from an impossible sleeping position, stretched and sat up, smacking his lips. He started to stretch and yawn again but paused mid yawn when he saw Hunter and I standing there. “Damn,” he said, giving me an awkward look up and down. “I didn't know BSI agents came in that model.” Hunter sat down next to him on the couch and stared intently at the TV. “Uh, hey, kid.”

  “Hunter.”

  “Right. Hunter.” He was quiet for a while. “So, uh, you like Scooby-Doo?”

  “Shhh. This is the best part.”

  “Oh,” said Ed, shrinking down. “Right.” Then he gave Chanter an unhappy glare, realizing Chanter had gotten him up to babysit.

  “They'll do fine,” Chanter promised, and I heard him go into the kitchen and start moving around some dishes. “Ed is practically a child himself.”

  “I'll be twenty in a few months,” Ed grumbled and turned the cartoon up.

  “Agent Black, if we can speak alone?”

  I gave one last, long look at my son before stepping into the kitchen with Chanter. “Just Judah. I'm not working right now, remember?”