Aiden looked back at the captain. The S2 seemed to want to keep digging, but even officers could get rank pulled on them. Aiden knew that the captain’s instincts were right, that his story wasn’t adding up. He was sure glad, though, that the others seemed to have bought it.
“Well, Aiden, let’s get you back to battalion. I know you must be anxious to get back to your squad,” Maj Cobin said as everyone started to file out of the room.
“Sir, I might have further questions later on,” Capt Jankovich called out as they were leaving the room.
“You can go through your XO,[36] and he’ll inform me if there’s anything else,” Maj Corbin said over his shoulder.
Aiden could have sworn the heard the major add “you little prick” to his response in a quiet voice.
Chapter 19
Hozan glanced down at his watch. It was 3:00 AM. His kind were not too concerned with punctuality; time didn’t seem as important to them as to humans, but he needed to speak with Aiden. Unfortunately, the young man seemed to be a no-show, and in another hour and a half, he was supposed to report back to the DFAC to get the morning meal going.
Footsteps sounded in back of him, but he didn’t need to look to know it wasn’t Aiden. This person had a gait nothing like the new kreuzung. A few moments later, a Marine hurried by, head down, probably making sure of where he was placing his feet in the darkness. Another few moments, and he was out of sight.
Hozan had reported Aiden’s first shift to the Council. He was told to watch him, and if it seemed like Aiden was going to reveal himself, to kill him. Hozan didn’t want it to come to that, and that was why he really needed to explain things to Aiden, to let him know how things stood. Not showing up as he had promised was not a good sign.
Hozan edged further back into the shadows amongst the oil drums. He knew no one could see him with the naked eye, but the Marines had night vision devices which enabled them to see in the dark better than any member of the Tribe. He only hoped that any surveillance was being focused outside the camp, not inside. Technically, he was allowed in most areas of the camp, but the Marines would frown upon him being this far from the DFAC and would want to know why he was here.
He settled in to wait. The same characteristic that rendered timeliness as something not that important also gave his people patience.
Chapter 20
Aiden peered into the darkness towards the line of gear lockers. He didn’t know if Hozan would be there. He’d promised to meet the Iraqi two nights ago. That first night, he just blew Hozan off. He’d been busy during the day, getting cleaned up, getting a new weapon and zeroing it in, answering the questions of his fellow Marines. But the fact of the matter was that he could have met Hozan: he just didn’t want to. It was as if by skipping the meeting, he could ignore what had happened to him. What he was.
He still couldn’t get his mind wrapped around it. He was a werewolf, something he had thought to be pure fantasy. Part of him recoiled at that. How could he have turned into a monster? But another part of him accepted it, even embraced it. Being a werewolf sure did explain many of the things that had been happening to him.
He had decided to meet with Hozan the next night, but the platoon had a mission. He could have begged out of it, but he assured Sgt Rickman that he was fine and wanted to go.
Now on the third night, he decided he had to know more about his situation, and Hozan was the only source of first-hand info available to him. He’d gone online earlier in the afternoon, but he couldn’t get much out of his search. It seemed that werewolves had been around since mankind first starting recording their world. Cave drawings in France over 40,000-years-old depicted them. From there, though, what a werewolf actually was varied significantly, ranging from devilish monsters feeding on old German villagers, to teen basketball players, to blood enemies of vampires to rivals of vampires over a young human girl’s affections. There were even different types of werewolves. The wulver from the Shetland Islands was sort of a spirit werewolf that mostly kept to itself. Most werewolves, such as the varluvs, vargs, loup-garous, and vikacises, changed from men to actual wolves. Some though, were what was termed therianthropic hybrids, creatures that shifted from human to the erect wolfmen prevalent in early werewolf movies. While this seemed to be the form Aiden had taken, frankly, Aiden didn’t have a clue as to just who, or perhaps what he was.
Aiden didn’t even know how much of what he’d read online was true. There were more than a few conflicting accounts of the werewolf myth. Well, not totally a myth, he had to remind himself.
He didn’t see anyone by the locker, but as he walked by, a shadow rose up and merged with him. Despite himself, Aiden jumped.
“It is good you are here,” Hozan said.
Hozan didn’t ask where he had been the last two nights, something for which he was grateful. Aiden walked up to their locker, glanced right and left to make sure no one was looking at them, and unlocked the padlock. The two of them slipped in.
The locker was full of the odds and ends that the gunny[37] and Sgt Cyr, the police sergeant,[38] kept for the use of the company. Along with the essentials such as shit paper, office supplies, and the like, there were odds and ends. Aiden sat down on an anvil. Where the gunny or Sgt Cyr had snatched that, and why anyone thought it would be worth keeping, Aiden had no idea.
Aiden didn’t want to turn on the light in the locker, afraid that some of it would seep out and let others know someone was in there. It would be no problem if Aiden was found, but explaining Hozan’s presence would be another thing altogether.
Aiden watched Hozan move to a stack of boxes and sit down. There was a small bit of outside light making its way inside the locker, but he couldn’t really make out the man’s face in the dark, and that might have been a good thing. He thought the darkness could make it easier to talk, making it less personal.
“So, what the hell’s happening to me?” he asked.
“Not hell, not heaven. It just is,” came the reply. “I need to know first, have you shifted again?”
“No.”
“That is good. As I told you before, you cannot shift for now. It would be very dangerous.”
“Why? Nothing happened to me before. I figured I have the ability now.”
“You have the ability, true. And shifting wouldn’t kill you, at least not yet. But others might not approve, and they might want to silence you,” Hozan told him.
That took Aiden aback for a moment. He thought of the movie he’d seen, where the vampires and werewolves were at war with each other.
“You mean the vampires?”
Despite the darkness, Aiden could see Hozan pull back slightly as he answered in a puzzled voice, “Vampires? Why do you keep asking about them? They are a myth. Have you ever seen one?”
“Well, no, but—”
“So they do not exist. Let’s deal with reality instead. There are others of the Tribe who will do what it takes to protect us.”
Aiden wanted to point out that he’d never seen a werewolf before, either, but now he certainly knew they existed. He wanted to know more about this “Tribe” and who might want to take him out, but Hozan said he’d get to that later.
“We are an old people—” Hozan began.
“How old? When were the first ones?”
“Old. Just old. How old are humans? We don’t know. And the fossil record, as you say in English, is very limited for us. Exactly how old doesn’t matter, only that we’ve been around for a long time. So now, let me continue. I have much to tell you tonight, things you need to know if you are going to survive.”
The “if you are going to survive” caught Aiden’s attention, and he shut up.
“We are stronger than humans. We have abilities that humans cannot hope to match. But we are few, and humans are many. When humans were scattered over the earth, many of our kind preyed on them. Wherever there were humans, so were we. But as humans grew more numerous, and more importantly, as they began to communicate with each
other, some among us knew that we could not keep up the old ways. We had to change. We had to be able to co-exist with humans, alongside of them, but hidden from their consciousness. That is why the Council was formed.”
“That’s like your government?”
“Not a government, exactly. More like a court. They adopted a set of rules that we call the Compact. These were designed to keep us hidden from the humans, and the Council takes action when those rules are broken.”
“What do you mean? What do they do?”
“There is only one consequence. Death.”
“Woah! They get executed? Just ’cause the Council says so?”
“Better one feral than a genocide of the Tribe. No one individual can be allowed to start a war.”
“A ‘feral?’” Aiden asked.
Aiden liked gaming, and one of his favorite games was The Elder Scrolls. In the game there were feral werewolves called vargrs. Were they real? he wondered.
“Yes, that’s what we call a criminal, someone who rejects the Council’s rules. It’s also what we call someone who is beyond the point of no return.”
“What do you mean by that? ‘Beyond the point of no return?’”
“I . . . it means . . . ah, it’s hard to explain because you don’t know enough yet. Let’s get back to that. For now, I’m going to start with just what we are from a physical standpoint.
“First, there are two kinds of us. We have the Bloods, like me, and the Kreuzung, like you.” He held up his hand to stop Aiden’s question before continuing. “Kreuzung is an old German phrase that means something like a mongrel or a hybrid. We use it for those like you who have been turned. I was born like this. You were turned by another blood when he bit you.”
“But how can biting me change who I am? I mean, I’ve got my DNA, and that’s what says who I am.”
“DNA can change. That’s what mutations are. Disease, radiation, time, certain chemicals, and environmental influences can all change your DNA. When you were bit, a part of your patron went into you, what we call the Seed. Think of it as a cross between a nanite and a virus.”
“You know about nanites?” Aiden asked.
“Ah, you think the poor ignorant Kurd who’s only good for feeding the great and powerful Americans doesn’t know anything about the world? Of course I know about nanites,” Hozan said, a note of anger in his voice.
Aiden bit his tongue, realizing he had been out of turn. Hozan spoke English well, so he probably wasn’t some ignorant, uneducated man.
“If I can continue, imagine this organic nanite going into your bloodstream. It wants to seek out your DNA and change you so your body can be a place where it can live. Your body, on the other hand, wants to fight off the invaders. That’s why you got so sick.”
“And my body won?”
“Think about it. If your body won, would you have been able to shift? No, your body did not win, luckily for you. If your body had been able to fight off the invaders, their destruction would have released toxins into your bloodstream that would have killed you.”
It seemed that everything Hozan told him centered around him almost dying or getting killed. He had felt pretty powerful killing the three mujahideen, almost invincible. Evidently, it wasn’t quite like that.
“For you, your patron’s Seed was powerful enough, and you were turned.”
“So if I bit someone, would he become a werewolf?” Aiden asked, curious about the possibility.
“Don’t even think of that,” Hozan snapped. “No one gets turned without the Council’s consent. And even if you did bite someone, the chances are nothing would happen.”
“Why not?”
“Look, how many times have you lain with a woman?”
Aiden didn’t want to tell him that he’d had sex only once, with Mary Kaye Lamont, the geeky goth girl a grade behind him at school who would sleep with anyone.
Hozan didn’t wait for an answer but went on, “And did your woman become with child each time? No, of course not. Just because you bite someone does not mean your Seed gets in, and even if it did, it might not be able to instigate a change. You are already once removed from a blood, and so your Seed is not as powerful, and not all of it works as well.”
“You mean like the Xerox Effect?”
“What is that?” Hozan asked.
“You know, like making a copy, then a copy of a copy, then a copy of a copy of a copy. Pretty soon, what you make is fuzzy and not too good,” Aiden said. “Xerox was a company that made all the early copying machines,” he added.
“‘Xerox Effect.’ Yes, exactly that. I’m going to have to remember that phrase. But for you, never, ever try and turn someone. The consequences could be bad for both of you. Better to just kill the person; at least you would not then incur the Council’s wrath.”
“OK, OK, I get it. Don’t bite anyone,” Aiden muttered.
When he’d realized what he was, he’d felt a sense of freedom. Now it looked like even werewolves had to follow the rules. That wasn’t what he expected.
“So, where was I? I told you about the Council and being turned. Maybe I should tell you about shifting,” Hozan said.
“Don’t take this wrong, but you don’t seem very organized,” Aiden told him.
“That’s one of our handicaps. We are not very organized in what we do. We tend to, how do you Americans say it, ‘go with the flow?’ Even kreuzung who were very organized as humans seem to lose some of that characteristic after they are turned. It is one of the things where humans are better than us.”
“But, I thought we were better than normal people. I’m stronger, that’s for sure,” Aiden protested.
“Yes, even in human form, you are stronger. You can see better in the dark. Your sense of smell is better. You are harder to kill, and when wounded, you heal faster.”
“Those are all good things, right? We’re like super heroes!”
“On the other hand,” Hozan went on, “your color perception fades, at least from what other kreuzungs have said. I wouldn’t know myself as I’ve never been human. Your ability to pick out objects standing still is less—it is easier when they are moving. If you are downwind, you might miss a hunter if he is standing still. You have a more difficult time in the bright sunlight.”
Aiden thought about that for a moment. It was true, things looked a bit faded to him. Being in Iraq, there wasn’t a surfeit of colors bombarding the eye anyway, but even taking that into account, he understood what Hozan was saying. Getting turned evidently had some penalties to go along with the benefits.
“You said something about healing, right? I’ve kinda got fucked up a couple of times, but you wouldn’t know it. I feel fine now,” Aiden said.
“Yes, yes, we heal quickly, even in human form. We heal even faster when we’ve shifted. If you think of the Seed as the nanites, they will rush to repair any damage. They will also fight off any infection.”
“You mean we can’t get sick?”
“Theoretically, I guess we could get sick if something was strong enough to overwhelm us. But I’ve never known anyone to get sick, and least not a blood. There was a kreuzung who was poisoned some years back, but she shifted and saved herself.”
“You mean, it’s easier when I’m a wolfman? It’s different?” Aiden asked.
“We don’t call your new form wolfman, and of course it’s different. The traditional term is “varg,” although some in the Tribe are starting to use “janus.” They think varg is getting too much of a negative connotation in the human media.”
“Janus? Wasn’t he some Greek god with two faces?” Aiden asked.
“Oh, so you did have some education after all,” Hozan said. “Janus was Roman, but yes, he had two faces. But back to your question, you are mostly human now, but when you shift, you change, gaining some benefits, losing some. The ability to heal is one of the gains, so when you are in varg form, you heal much better and much quicker. If you are ever seriously hurt in human form, and your hum
an body can’t cope, you can shift to varg,” Hozan told him.
“Man, that’s sick! So we’re immortal, huh? Nothing can kill us?”
“Your patron died, right? So you know that isn’t true. If someone cuts off your head, in human or varg form, you’re dead. We are pretty tough, but not immortal.”
“But what about silver? I read about that online. It’s supposed to kill werewolves,” Aiden said.
“Cold steel will kill us if it is used right. But, yes, silver is not our friend. Silver is in the Group 11 of the periodic table, along with copper and gold. Each of these have . . . how do you say it in English . . . I know the Kurdish, the Arabic, and even the German, but maybe a ‘filled D-shell with one S-orbital electron outside?’”
Aiden stared at him blankly.
“I know the science, but I can’t pick the right words in English,” Hozan continued. “But it makes silver, copper, and gold super-conductors, and we think that interferes with our ability to heal ourselves. When we heal, it takes a huge amount of energy, and our nervous system is hyper-active. We think the silver basically short-circuits the healing process. It won’t kill us like the movies show, but it stops us from healing. A minor wound from a silver knife, if the knife is left inside of us, could be deadly.”
Aiden contemplated that for a few moments.
“How come people know that? I thought you said this Council keeps us secret.”
“Nothing can remain secret forever. Even without ferals, somebody would slip up. The Council was formed to minimize the risk. Before that, our kind did what they wanted, and humans banded together to fight back. Most of what you read, the true parts, at least, was hard-earned knowledge from humans fighting back, from the hunters,” Hozan said.
“People hunted us?” asked Aiden.
“Yes, for thousands of years. Usually, the hunters met a quick end, but not all. By trial and error, they found out how to kill us, and the lucky, the strong—well, some—became successful hunters. It is rare, though, and usually celebrated. There are woodcut prints in the world’s museums of the execution of Peter Stumpe in Bedburg, Germany, and the gun used by the hunter Jean Chastel to kill the Beast of Le Gavaduan is one of the relics at a church in France. Often, though, the “victories” have nothing to do with us. Those killed were mere humans who others wanted out of the way.”
The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy Page 9
