The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  A blaring horn almost made him stop. A car had come around the bend and had stopped, honking at the assembled wolves. The wolves scattered across the road and into the river. A man opened the driver’s door and stood up, a camera in hand as he took a picture of the fleeing wolves.

  That gave him pause. If those wolves were such a threat to him, why were they in turn afraid of a human in a car? He started to slow his ascent, but a quick glance at the three like him who were still advancing, spurred him into motion again.

  He didn’t stop until he’d reached the top, a rounded outcropping with a dense forest leading up at a more reasonable slope. He started to run, but something inside of him begged him to stop, not to give into mindless panic.

  Army strong!

  He had no idea from where that thought came, but it calmed him, and he stopped and looked around. If the wolves had run from the man in the car, they couldn’t be invincible. And the three still climbing were just like him.

  A large rock was at his feet. He considered it for a moment, and not really understanding why, squatted to lift it. It took all his effort, and he stood there, wondering why he’d done it. Something made him walk to the edge of the precipice. Looking over, just below him, the first of the three was just pulling himself to the top. Without thinking, he dropped the rock on his pursuer, who had only time for an angry snarl before the rock brushed him right off the rock wall, knocking him into one of the other three and sending both all the way to the bottom. He couldn’t actually see the bottom due to the curve of the slope, but the rock made it all the way down, at least, bounding back into view over the road and into the river with a splash.

  It took two more tries, but he finally hit the last of his pursuers, who was already retreating back down. He looked at the darkening sky and howled out his victory, ready to take on all comers.

  Across the river, a lone wolf stepped out of the trees and stared at him. His exultation deflated instantly, and fear grasped his heart again. He wheeled and into the trees, only wanting to put as much distance between the wolves and him as possible.

  Chapter 26

  Hozan looked up the slope into which the colonel had disappeared. It hadn’t been confirmed yet if the rogue was in fact the colonel—the Council had no idea at all who it was—but Hozan felt it in his bones.

  There was no doubt that it was a rogue, though. It was pretty evident that it had been about to prey on the family sitting at the side of the river. The hunter team, which had been tracking the rogue for over a day, had arrived just in time to thwart that.

  The family at the river had pulled out of the little trail in their SUV, swerving madly in a cloud of dust as they hit the road to head back down the hill into Virginia and civilization. Having a varg burst into their little afternoon outing, followed by a pack of wolves, had to be disconcerting, and he wasn’t surprised that they’d fled, not stopping to help the man with the car still at the side of the road, now with a policeman and tow truck to assist.

  Hozan had been glad and relieved that not one of the team had suggested “cleaning up” the family. He wouldn’t have been able to accept that, and it would not have been necessary for the safety of the Tribe. Wolves had been reintroduced into West Virginia, and while not so near the Virginia border, it was not inconceivable that the team could be mistaken for the natural wolves. As far as the rogue, well, they would come to the conclusion that they’d been mistaken.

  Hozan looked around the ten-member hunter team. Eight members, now. Two had been badly hurt by the rogue who’d simply dropped rocks on them. One, a woman for whom Hozan only knew the first name, was hurt, but mobile, and she had been adamant that she would continue, the need for revenge obvious in her voice. Two of their team, though, were hurt too badly to keep going and waiting for them to heal would take too much time. Regina, the woman, had managed to pull the other two to the side of the road quickly and before any more humans drove past, and the two were now being tended before the rest of the team took off again. Lars Howell, their leader and a Council operative, had decided that climbing the wall as vargs would allow them to pick up the rogue’s trail quicker before shifting again to lycans in order to chase it down. They were just waiting another 20 or 30 minutes until darkness would keep them from unintentionally being spotted.

  With their extra speed as lycans, it shouldn’t take them long to catch up to the rogue and get this mess over and done with.

  Chapter 27

  Jack, whose consciousness had managed to surface long enough to try and control their pell-mell flight, was slowly being pushed back down into their subconscious. He’d managed to slow their flight long enough to set a dead-fall of rock, but the delay while he rigged it, something he didn’t even know that he’d remembered the process, raised their anxiety enough so that the creature’s mind took back over and flight became paramount.

  He had been running for most of the night, fully aware of the wolves on its trail, fully aware that they would not stop until they had him. Why they were after him, he really didn’t know, but danger was danger even if the specifics were unknown. He had to get away if he hoped to survive.

  The creature had great endurance, but he had not fed well as of late, and the wolves seemed never to tire. They’d been slowly closing the distance through the night. Down the mountains on the other side, he came to a good-sized stream that it splashed across. The other side of him, the side that had slowed to pile rocks in a deadfall along the way before the beast overpowered that control, tried to urge him to stay in the stream for awhile to throw off the pursuit, but the beast shoved that side back down and kept going.

  The creature knew that the other one inside of him was part of him in some way, that they were one and the same, but that concept confused him, and he simply ignored the fact. He was in control now, and all that mattered was survival.

  The pack behind him was silent, but he knew they were on his trail. There was a connection of some sort that he didn’t understand but had to accept. The pack was drawing closer.

  He had been running through some pretty rough, isolated terrain, but as the ground flattened out, there were more signs of humans. He skirted several homes, lone islands in the forest, but as he ran farther, lights began to show through the trees.

  The creature came to a full stop as the trees gave way to a line of houses, all in a row, with chain link fences marking their territory. The creature wanted to turn back, but the sense that the pack was close behind goaded him forward. He jumped the fence, crossed the yard, and jumped yet another fence. Within a few strides, he found himself in the middle of a cul-de-sac, not that the term meant anything to him.

  The creature stood exposed underneath a street light, contemplating his next move. A sound from the woods on the other side of the houses caught his attention as a dog started barking at the same time. Spooked, he bolted down the street where nothing impeded its progress.

  More dogs started barking as they sensed him invade their territory. Before he realized where it was going, the forest was far behind, and houses gave way to buildings. He knew he could not survive the realm of man, but in the forest, the pack lay in wait, moving along the edge of the human-claimed land, blocking his way out to freedom.

  A car drove by, the driver oblivious to the creature that skidded to a stop beside it. The creature, panting in its exhaustion, stood there for a moment, trying to decide what to do.

  A tremendous rise in the dogs’ urgency and volume raised the hackles on its neck. The pack, he knew, had decided it couldn’t wait. They were coming in after him.

  In a panic, the creature bolted to its right where a high chain link fence protected a wide-open area. Instead of fleeing alongside of it, the creature climbed up and over the other side, falling in a heap to the ground. Scrambling up, he ran across the close-cropped grass, past a large rectangle of the same material as what made up the streets, and to a huge, one-story brick building. The area reeked of humans, of young humans, but that barely registered
with him. The threat of the wolves was too great.

  The creature turned to run alongside the building, hoping to get around it and past. Four shadows, low to the ground, flowed around the low fence well to the front of him, stopping him in his tracks. He spun to go the other way, but had only taken a few steps when up ahead, four more wolves, clear in the lights, were running along the far side of the fence. He knew they would cut him off before he could reach the far side and freedom.

  Stopping on the unnatural surface of the large rectangular area, he backed up against the wall of the building. When they attacked, that was one less direction in which he had to defend.

  And he knew, without a doubt, that he would have to defend his life. The wolves were there for only one reason.

  He had killed three of them already, and that gave him a small degree of hope. As he stood waiting, the eight wolves approached from two sides, cautiously, but with evident confidence. He stared at each wolf in turn, then rose up to his full height and vented his anger, its rage, and its challenge into the skies with a huge howl.

  The wolves never flinched. One of them shifted, moving to two legs to stand in front of him. Two more, then the last five shifted. Eight vargs, stood in a semicircle around the rogue, ready to dispense justice.

  The creature, overcome with fury, charged.

  Chapter 28

  Hozan looked down at Jack Tarnition’s mangled body on the school’s basketball court. The rogue varg had actually acquitted itself well. Not only had a stupid and primitive deadfall managed to hurt one of the team—something overconfidence had allowed—but it had hurt four of the team in the final execution. Regina had lost a good bit of her left hand, and three others, including Hozan, had fairly serious wounds. All would heal, but unlike rogues that gave in to their panic and mindlessness, the colonel had fought to the end.

  Acknowledging that did not mean respect. Hozan had none of that for the colonel. He was a threat to Aiden and the others and had to be eliminated. Hozan had seen enough death in war, both friendly and enemy, to be somewhat inured to it all, and this man had brought it on himself.

  Hozan was angry with himself, though, that he could not switch out the tissue and blood samples. Keenan had provided them for him, assuring him that they had come from people unrelated to any of them. As a lycan, there weren’t many places to hide even two small sample vials, but Hozan had endured their insertion while human and made sure they were still in place after shifting to lycan. Somewhere, though, either during the chase or after shifting to varg and then during the execution, the vials had come out and were lost. So when the samples were taken, Hozan had nothing with which to switch them.

  None of the team recognized the colonel as his varg body reverted to its human form after his death. There was no reason for them to. But Hozan had seen the colonel’s photos, and his fears had been confirmed. And he knew that once the colonel’s tissues had been analyzed, it would only be a short matter of time before the Council knew that Aiden was the colonel’s patron. Nemir should be able to get a stay of execution until they could understand how Aiden, a kreuzung, could turn another human who not only lived but shifted.

  After that, particularly given the close call with this rogue and how that could have affected the Tribe, not even Nemir could save Aiden. The Tribe could brook no threat to its existence.

  One by one, the team shifted back to lycan. They had a long way to get back, and the sooner they started, the better. Hozan spared one look back at the colonel’s body. They couldn’t carry it all the way back, so it was better left where it was as a random act of particularly vicious violence.

  Hozan shifted and followed the rest of the team out of the town and back into the covering embrace of the forest.

  Chapter 29

  “And you’re sure it was him?” Claire asked.

  “Yes, it was your colonel,” Hozan assured her.

  Aiden, still holding Claire’s hand, didn’t know how to take that. As much as he’d discounted what Keenan had told him about the colonel planning the assault on his mother, when he’d come to accept it, he wanted to be the one to extract justice, not Hozan and some hunter team sent by the Council. But at least it was done.

  “So now what?” Keenan asked.

  The four were in Hozan’s apartment, Keenan having just driven down from DC. Aiden and Claire were on the couch, Hozan and Keenan in two of the four dining room chairs.

  “Now, we wait. And they will find out that Aiden was the rogue’s patron.”

  “How long do we have?” Aiden asked.

  “Probably a week, from how I understand the process. Maybe a day or two less.”

  “And then what do we do?” Claire asked, her voice filled with concern for her husband.

  “That is when we offer Keenan’s suggestion, to get you tested,” Hozan said, nodding at Aiden. “We must give Nemir time to sway the others in the Council. We cannot allow for rash decisions. Meanwhile, we stay very quiet, what you say, ‘low key.’ Understand?”

  “Uh, Aiden’s got another mission,” Keenan said.

  “I do?” Aiden asked.

  “Yeah. I came here directly from Dr. Lowenstein’s office. He’s got another mission for you. This is only a warning order, he said. We’ll get the full mission tomorrow.”

  “Do we know what this mission is? Where?”

  “A target has to be eliminated. There’s yet another new terrorist organization forming in Syria, and we need to nip it in the bud. Aiden is to fly to Gaziantep tomorrow night and then driven to the Syrian border to make his way to Aleppo and take out the target.”

  “Aleppo and Gaziantep?” Hozan asked immediately.

  “Yes. He lands in Gaziantep. That’s in Turkey. Then he’s to go to Aleppo.

  “Yes, Keenan,” Hozan said with a scowl on this face. “I do believe I know both cities, and Aiden will not be going to them. Not now, certainly.”

  “But he’s getting orders,” Keenan protested.

  “Do you know who’s in Gaziantep? No, of course you do not. You know nothing beyond your own borders,” Hozan said, scorn in his voice. “To tell you, the Yilmaz family, who not only own half of the carpet factories in the city, the same factories that make most of the world’s carpets,” he continued, kicking at the light green carpet that covered his apartment floor, “but they are of the tribe. And they have family all the way to Damascus, to include Aleppo. If Aiden goes there and shifts, they will certainly know it. And when the Council finds out, not even Nemir can save him.”

  “You’re not going,” Claire immediately told Aiden.

  “But the mission,” Keenan said, but without conviction.

  “The mission must be cancelled,” Hozan said with the conviction that Keenan had lacked.

  “But how do I explain that to Lowenstein?”

  “That is your problem.”

  “Just tell him the truth,” Aiden said quietly.

  The other three turned in unison to look at him.

  “Uh, yeah, ‘Dr. Lowenstein, it seems that Corporal Kaas can’t go on your mission because there’s a freaking werewolf council out there that will kill him if he does,” Keenan said.

  “Pretty much, yeah. Look, I’ve got the Council on my ass, right? And now I’ve got this Lowenstein guy who wants me to be a secret weapon. At some point, he’s got to understand my position, or I’m getting killed by the Council and he’s out his secret weapon. So let’s just do it now and get it over with. We need to set the ground rules now, or it’s never going to work.”

  Hozan tilted his head and lifted one eyebrow. “The cub’s got a point.”

  “Are you sure?” Claire asked quietly.

  He placed his other hand on top of the two hands they were still holding.

  “We have to do it sometime. And I’m not going to this Gazee-whatever place if I’m going to get killed by the Council for doing it. I want to serve the country, and I love the Corps, but if I have to, I’ll go UA,[117] and he’ll never see me again.”
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  “We’ll go UA,” she assured him. “Together.”

  “And with your brilliant idea, how am I supposed to tell him that? How am I supposed to know all of this?”

  “You don’t have to know anything, only that I told you I had to talk to the man himself.”

  Hozan looked impressed and said, “The cub’s right. It’s his ass on the line, and he needs to do something. He can’t let your doctor think he’s only a tool to be used.

  Keenan gave a long and hard look at Aiden, then shrugged and said, “OK, if that’s how you want it. Be ready at 0500. You and I are driving up to the Pentagon where you can make your pitch.”

  Chapter 30

  “He’s ready,” Keenan said, looking into the small outer office where Aiden had taken a seat.

  Aiden got up and entered the small office. It didn’t look like much for someone who held his fate in his hands. Dr. Lowenstein was completely average-looking, someone Aiden would never have given a second glance had they passed on the street. Face-to-face, though, the man had a steely glint in his eyes that bequeathed power despite the friendly smile plastered on his face. The man held out his hand for Aiden to shake. Aiden shook the proffered hand, then sat in the seat the man indicated.

  “That will be all, Colonel Ward,” the man said, dismissing Keenan. “I’d like to talk to our Marine alone.”

  Shit! Aiden thought. I want him here with me.

  Dr. Lowenstein waited until Keenan left before turning back to Aiden.

  “Colonel Ward said you needed to see me, Corporal. I had intended to come see you at Fort Bragg after your mission, to see for myself what your capabilities are. I apologize for not meeting you earlier, but other projects have demanded my attention.”

  Other projects? What other projects outweigh having a fucking werewolf under your command?