Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  Bian reached over and picked up a ranger hat. “Oh, cool. Smokey the Bear. I love these.” She put it on. It was about five sizes too big, and I tried to think of a joke about that.

  “Put it down,” Ursula snapped, glaring at us in the rear view mirror.

  “This your van?” I asked over her shoulder.

  “No. Why?”

  “Curious. Why are you driving someone else’s van?”

  “Silas borrowed mine.”

  “You both work for the Parks?”

  “No.” Ursula said. Then so quietly I almost missed it. “Silas is the Park Ranger. I’m a veterinarian.”

  “No sick poodles today?”

  “I was working when I got the call from Felix. I have a backup. I work with farm animals, not poodles, as if that’s any concern of yours.”

  So she could speak in whole sentences, sort of strung together. A veterinarian werewolf. Awesome. I wondered what the animals thought of that.

  “Where are we going?” asked Bian.

  “The fertilizer factory in Aurora.”

  That was as much as we could get from her.

  I called Julie and explained where we were, but Alex’s cell remained offline.

  From something Alex had said previously, I knew the factory was alongside I-70, so Alex and Ricky would have been coming back that way. Maybe they’d stopped and found something, but what would cause this emergency summons?

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  We came off Colfax, picking up a smaller road that ended at the factory. It was a wholesale and professional supply facility, with a neat, white front and loading docks running down one side. If I hadn’t been looking hard, I would have missed the small sign that told me it was the depot for Larimer Agricultural Fertilizers.

  Ursula drove us around to the back, where what appeared to be the original warehouse still stood. It was an old iron framework construction covered with corroding corrugated sheet metal. A man in blue coveralls saw us and heaved on a sliding door, big enough for an eighteen-wheeler to pass.

  We stopped just inside. It was gloomy as a cave and, with the echoes of the truck’s engine falling silent, the ungreased squeal of the door runners sliding shut was ominous. Spears of sunlight shone through rust gaps in the walls and ceiling, highlighting the dust in the air and picking out the decomposing hulks of old machinery lined along the side.

  We were parked beside Alex’s SUV. He and Ricky were standing at the far end with Felix, Silas and a couple more men in coveralls who I thought I recognized from the Matlal ambush on Monday evening. Underneath a nose-prickling odor of chemicals from the fertilizer factory, there was a smell of blood and violence in the air that made me hurry across to Alex.

  We met halfway. I steeled myself and hugged him. There was no reaction from my strongbox, so I held it for a few moments more, letting his warmth seep into me. It wasn’t his blood I could smell.

  “The Colonel?” he asked.

  “Back at Manassah. His wife was wounded, but Bian healed her. Everyone else is fine.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t talk earlier,” he said. “Ricky got a call and we had to come in here. It’s been pretty tense. We stopped—”

  He went silent as Felix and the others joined us.

  A very unhappy Felix. I wondered if there was any other kind. Then again, I had disobeyed his orders.

  “What the hell are you playing at, Farrell?” Felix said.

  Bian chose that moment to amble up alongside me. “And what are you doing here?” Felix said to her.

  “Chillin’,” Bian said casually. “What’s the big deal?”

  I’d seen Bian in action with the katana that she was wearing. Maybe the pack had too, because I could feel the atmosphere changing. The balance felt different with her next to me. I offered up a little prayer of thanks that she’d decided to come along.

  “The big deal is spying,” Silas said.

  I’d had it with this Were attitude, always expecting me to know what they were talking about; this bullshit superiority; the feeling I was always under some kind of threat from them. They seemed to be forever looking for the ways I didn’t fit with them and never thinking that they might be the cause of it.

  “I’m glad you raised it,” I said, “because I’ve got a real problem with betrayals.”

  That rocked Silas back.

  But what happened next did the same for me. As Silas swelled menacingly, Felix grabbed and held his arm.

  “Let’s hear this complaint,” he said, his voice low and quiet.

  Felix’s anger wasn’t gone, but he was holding it in check.

  “Monday night,” I said. “I was at the restaurant with Ricky, Alex and Olivia. Who else knew?”

  Felix shrugged. “The doctor and I, of course. Possibly the guards at Coykuti. Silas and Ursula.” He glanced at his enforcers to see if anyone had any other suggestions. No one spoke. “So why?”

  “Which one of you told the rogue?”

  Ursula’s face rippled. She didn’t change, but with the movement across it, I caught a glimpse of the wolf-snarl behind. Silas took another step. I felt Bian’s weight come up on the balls of her feet, but nothing more. If it all went south, she had to judge the time—drawing her katana would be provocation, but she needed space to get that blade free. I felt the weight of the HK under my arm, visualized the moves that would draw it and flick the safety off.

  And Alex turned subtly from his neutral position to face his own pack.

  Oh, shit. All in all, maybe I had pushed too hard.

  Of all of us, Felix stayed completely still.

  “Olivia told me you’d had trouble,” he murmured. “But she said nothing about the rogue.”

  The dynamics shifted again. Ursula and Silas took their lead from Felix and calmed down. Ricky eased back a step.

  All of them noted Alex’s new position. Damn, I’d caused him problems again.

  “All Olivia knew was my clothes and boots were stolen out of the back of my car.” I met Felix’s eyes and held them. The hell with werewolf dominance posturing; I would not lower my eyes. “Then the next night, those clothes turned up on the rogue’s latest victim. It’s the first time he’s wanted a body discovered immediately,” I paused, “and he dressed her in my clothes. Message, you think?”

  I let the silence build a moment.

  “So, the whole pack and Altau know I’m working on the hunt; that’s not a secret. My car’s not a secret. But only a handful of people knew where I’d be on Monday night. The rogue didn’t find it accidentally.”

  “Your House knew as well,” Felix pointed out.

  “You can’t believe one of my House would betray me,” I snapped, without thinking.

  “You can’t believe one of the pack would betray you.”

  I’d fallen right into that one.

  “But I’m not pack. You haven’t accepted me. They all made that plain on Monday after the fight with Matlal’s pack.”

  “The fight I explicitly told you not to get involved in.”

  The argument seemed to be slipping away from me. I was digging myself in a hole and letting him get out of his.

  “You’re going to have to decide whether she’s in or out, Felix,” Bian said. “If she’s not in the pack, why are you trying to tell her what to do? Hmm? And from what I hear, she was an asset on Monday night. But, anyhow, we should get back to who told the rogue. If you’re so sure no one would deliberately tell the rogue, who might have spoken to someone outside the pack? Or had a conversation in the hearing of someone else?”

  Thank you, Bian.

  Felix exchanged looks with his enforcers. “I’ll question everyone individually and see if they discussed the meeting at the restaurant with anyone.”

  “And they can’t lie to you,” Bian said quietly.

  “They can’t,” Felix barked. “But it’ll take some time to organize. On the other hand, you can explain this right now.”

  He gestured. The two in coveralls went and dragged a
long, patchwork bag from the shadows where they’d been standing when we arrived.

  As they approached, I saw they weren’t dragging a bag by its handles, they were dragging a body by its bound arms. A light body. Female. And that’s where the smell of blood came from.

  They thought whoever it was worked for me.

  Tullah? Jofranka? Anger surged in me as I shoved them aside and turned the woman over carefully, kneeling down to hold her.

  Too slight for Tullah. The skin of her hands too pale for Jofranka. Who the hell?

  Her head had been covered in a dirty burlap sack. I untied it and pulled it off.

  Melissa blinked up at me. Her face was swollen, bruised and bloody. Her eyes could barely open. She was shivering, I guessed partly from cold and partly from fear. But incredibly, through all that, there was a gleam of satisfaction at seeing me.

  I undid the gag.

  “Knew it,” she whispered through bleeding lips.

  What the hell was she doing here? But that would wait; anger swamped the bewilderment.

  “Which of you bastards did this to her?”

  “So, you do know her,” Felix said from behind me. “Lucky for her.”

  “You call this lucky?”

  “The alternative was helping crops grow, so, yes. If she’d just said she was working for you from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened,” he growled. “But you’d still be here explaining what you think you’re doing spying on us.”

  She said she was working for me? Shit.

  “My fault,” croaked Melissa. “Di’n’t clear it with Amber. She di’n’t know.”

  Alex handed me a bottle of water and I carefully drizzled some into her mouth while I thought furiously.

  The pack expected me to have good links with the police and to somehow use that to help in my hunting for the rogue. Even if she was suspended, Melissa had those links, and Agent Griffith wouldn’t be watching her like he was watching José. She was a forensic scientist, if we happened to stumble across clues that needed that. She’d already proved she had some insights, and claimed more. She’d managed to find this place, so she had to have a nose for investigation. Maybe she should be working for me.

  Against all that, I’d have to keep her from talking to others about anything paranormal that she’d come across. Like a werewolf body disposal facility, for instance.

  And she’d not just showed up here, she’d been caught; not what I wanted in a field agent.

  Or did it just come down to saving her life?

  Indecision, as much as anything else, kept me from saying anything.

  “Didn’t clear what?” Felix said.

  Melissa cleared her throat. “I’ve been investigating the cases Amber’s working on,” she said. “Independently. I can help, but we didn’t have time to discuss what I was doing.”

  She was skirting the truth by a fair margin, but luckily none of them caught it.

  “What part of your independent investigation would have brought you here?” Silas asked suspiciously. “How did you find out this belongs to us?”

  “No one told me, if that’s what you’re asking.” Melissa coughed quietly. “This was just the next on my list of factories to check.”

  “Explain.” Silas knelt down beside us and frowned at her.

  I pulled Melissa closer. There wasn’t a lot I could do alone against Silas, but I didn’t want him threatening her. She’d had enough.

  “Fertilizer dust.” She tried to lift her hands, but they were still tied. She gestured upwards with her chin and our eyes followed. One of the beams of sunlight passed a couple of yards above us, turning all the dust floating in the air into tiny, incandescent stars. “Some of the bodies dumped up in the mountains had traces of fertilizer, like you’d get from transporting it in a van used at a factory. Or if the killer worked at a factory.”

  “But that wasn’t in the records,” I said, despite myself.

  “The department didn’t want to include it,” she said. “Too remote a chance. Might be a false connection. Bunch of bullshit reasons. Not too remote for me. Been checking them all.”

  “That’s crazy. There are dozens of these kinds of factories,” Silas said.

  “What’s it to you anyway?” Ursula asked.

  Silas edged closer.

  I pushed them back. “Give us some space.”

  “What it comes down to,” Bian’s voice cut through the tension that was growing again, “is this woman’s status. Is she part of your House, Amber?”

  And part of Altau by association. Bian was verbally pushing them all back. The one thing that definitely would make them back off was the thought that they were stepping on Skylur’s toes.

  Damn. Damn. Damn. I was being hustled into a decision.

  My House or not?

  I looked down at Melissa and my Athanate suddenly made my mind up for me.

  “Mine,” I said, exasperated by the feeling of Athanate pleasure that gave me.

  “Good,” Bian said. “You all can give us some time here for a few running repairs, then we’ll answer your questions.” She motioned them away.

  Bain and I lifted Melissa gently to her feet. One of the workers motioned to the back of the building. “Restroom there,” he growled.

  We just got her there when a door opened at the back and Doctor Noble arrived, pissed at not being called earlier and even more pissed that he’d had to postpone a consultation to find out what was going on.

  “Jumped-up quack,” muttered Bian as we closed the restroom door behind us.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” I hissed in Melissa’s ear as I started to untie her.

  “Just the job I was supposed to be—” she complained before I stuck my hand over her mouth, muffling the cry of pain from her bruised lips.

  “Time for a few hard truths,” I whispered, “seeing as I’ve had to take you on board.”

  She nodded carefully. There was still that look of satisfaction in her eyes. She was on a lead that was yielding big results. Forget that she’d nearly been killed. And they called me a crazy bitch.

  I dropped my hand. “Everyone in this building, except you, isn’t human.” Her eyes widened, but the threat of my hand kept her silent. “Among other things, we have very good hearing. They can hear us outside if we raise our voices. And when we go back out, remember this: everyone will be able to hear how quickly your heart is beating. Everyone will be able to smell how nervous or scared you are. We’ll even be able to tell your reaction to a question. So avoid lying, starting now.”

  I was watching her as she nodded again. Her breathing was rapid and her heartbeat was all over the place, which wasn’t surprising. She was scared. Well, she damn well ought to be.

  “You lied about checking all the factories, for instance.” That worked like a slap in her face. “What made you come here?”

  “Anomalies,” she said quietly.

  I freed her hands.

  Bian wet some paper towels and handed them over to start cleaning her face.

  “Family-owned for over fifty years,” she explained. “Only just covering costs. All the other little independents like that have been bought out.” She tried shrugging and ended up wincing as she added ruefully, “Unfortunately, also the only one with someone on the premises, 24/7, as it turns out.”

  “You’re telling me this is the only uneconomical, family-owned fertilizer business left in Denver?”

  “No, there are ten. I’ve been checking one a week for the last couple of months. Testing the dust. No matches.” She cleared her throat, eyes flicking desperately between Bian and me. “Is this the…are you…are they all in it?”

  “No. This isn’t a cult responsible for those murders. Or not that I know of. But if they really were killing them, they’d have just processed the bodies here, not dumped them out in the mountains.”

  “You’ve blundered into something just as dangerous, though,” Bian said.

  Her eyes went back to the door.
“What—”

  “They’re werewolves, okay? I can’t explain it now. Sometimes there are casualties and they can’t leave them lying around for forensics to have a look at. This is one way to dispose of the evidence. In the fertilizer, like you would have been.”

  “Werewolves.” It wasn’t a question. It hadn’t thrown her. Even in her shocked state, her mind started working on what she knew about the cases and how this new fact might fit in. It was probably her coping strategy. The trouble was, her idea of werewolves was a product of modern entertainment. “But—”

  Bian came and rested her chin on my shoulder. “Do we bite her now, or keep her to play with later?” she purred.

  I could smell the elethesine hormone that triggers the Athanate changes, and manifests the fangs. From Melissa’s startled reaction, I knew that Bian’s fangs were out.

  The question was why.

  Bian loved being shocking, but the real message was for me. I’d been maneuvered into accepting Melissa as part of my House, and Bian was reminding me it was now my responsibility to ensure that the Athanate remained secret. Or she would.

  “Oh God! Vamp—” Too loud. I shoved my hand over Melissa’s mouth again until she calmed down.

  “Not vampires. Do not say that word out there.”

  “But, the fangs… Oh! You mean they don’t know?” So much for never speculating. Her mind was leaping from the facts into the big blue sky.

  “We’re Athanate, not vampires. Vampires don’t exist and the werewolves know that.” I sighed. “There’s a whole bunch of stuff you’re going to need to know, but for the moment, just say as little as possible.”

  I felt Bian’s presence prompting me.

  “And everything paranormal you find out is secret. So either you’re stuck in my House keeping it a secret, or we erase your memories. That’s not pleasant. It spills over. You might lose years of memories.”

  That hit her. Maybe she shared my phobia—lose a little and how do you know how much you’ve lost?

  “Stuck in your House?” she asked tentatively. She’d picked up it didn’t mean where I lived.

  I nodded. Detailed explanation would have to wait: Bian tapped my shoulder and jerked her thumb at the door. Noble had finished his rant. Someone was coming over to check on us.