by Wen Spencer
He was thankful the elevator appeared moments after he slammed down on the button. Ru huddled in the corner, trying to keep his hurt to himself.
"He's not right," Atticus said to the numbers counting down. "He doesn't know jack shit about me."
"I screwed up big-time at the house. I've gotten too lax. I count on you being able to take anything the perps deal out."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Atticus said. "I rushed in like an idiot, and there were just too many of them. We lost it the moment I got out of the car. Hell, when I left the hotel." He reached out and tried to smooth away the worry line on Ru's brow. "You didn't let me go alone, and that's all you could have done, and that's all that matters." Ru gave him a sad smile as the elevator stopped on their floor and the door opened. "Let's get Kyle and go down to the bar."
Normally, Atticus didn't drink. It never solved anything, and his body rejected the poison violently, but he did it when he was depressed. Tonight he intended to get smashed.
The hotel bar had wood floors of cherry with narrow strips of maple and deep red walls. It was cool and elegant, not at all comforting.
"It was just like Daggit said, werewolves," Atticus said after they'd filled Kyle in. "I could smell them. I could feel it." He rubbed his fingers together. He'd scrubbed the evidence away but his perfect memory held the recall of the genetic pattern, so like his, but with a thread of wolf DNA running through it. "Part human, part wolves."
"Yeah, but you're not," Ru said.
He shot Ru a look and went to buy himself another bottle of whiskey. The problem with trying to get drunk was that it was expensive; his body rid itself of the alcohol nearly as fast as he drank it. He carried the bottle back to their table.
"You're not a werewolf," Ru continued as if he hadn't left.
"But everything fits. The whole healing thing. The heightened senses."
"You don't turn into a wolf."
Atticus poured himself a shot of whiskey, ignoring him, trying not to think of the memories he saved from before he was found—those of running on four legs. If he looked hard enough, he could find that thread of wolf in himself. "I can remember . . . something."
Kyle was ignoring them in favor of his PDA, a sure sign that the conversation was bothering him greatly.
Atticus drank the whiskey, letting it burn its way down and blur the edges of his razor-sharp—wolfish—senses. "And I can remember Ukiah. At least I think it was him. I've always felt like there was . . . someone . . . out there. Someone I lost."
"What was the whole stand-around-and-stare-at-you thing, anyhow?" Ru asked.
"They went through my memories. It was like a television, and they kept changing the channels. I couldn't stop them."
"Then they know . . . ?"
"Yeah, they know. They know everything important." He felt like he had been raped. There wasn't a dark secret in his soul that they didn't uncover and fumble through.
"What do we do next?" Ru asked.
Atticus glared at him. He knew what Ru was doing. "We get drunk."
"And tomorrow?"
"We'll think about it when we get up."
"One thing's for certain." Kyle broke his silence. "The Dog Warriors are going to be after the Temple of New Reason."
They looked at him in stunned surprise.
"Well, the cultists killed your brother, and they're the ones with the drugs that the Dog Warriors want, so of course they're going to go after the cult."
"Damn," Atticus swore. "Ukiah knows that the stuff came from the Iron Horses. They'll hit them next."
"The Iron Horses will probably roll over for them," Ru said. "They idolize the Dog Warriors."
"I don't know," Atticus said. "There's a lot of money involved. It's not like they're going to turn over the cash cow."
It would be safest to assume that the Dog Warriors had already blown their cover with the Iron Horses. It was stunning that the Pack had left the two agents alive. During their "test" he couldn't even see; it was like the Dog Warriors had focused his eyes inward. Atticus had been helpless—a new and uncomfortable feeling for him. Not one he wanted to repeat. They'd have to get ahead of the Dog Warriors and stay there—but how?
"What did you find out about the cult?" Atticus asked Kyle.
Kyle made a noise of disgust. "Trying to find out anything was like wading through a flood of sewage."
"What happened to the cultist picked up at the rest stop?"
"They've identified the one killed in the shoot-out: John Fender of New Hampshire. He joined the cult two years ago. Apparently the Pennsylvania State Police pulled over a cult member," Kyle frowned at his PDA. "Dmitriy Yevgenyevitch Zlotnikov was arrested earlier this month while driving Pender's car. Zlotnikov died in a holding tank without explaining where Fender was. Fender's parents listed him as missing after Zlotnikov died, and provided dental records. There's a flag on Zlotnikov's records indicating that his hobbies included high explosives, and abandoned cult property might be booby-trapped."
Atticus grunted.
"I'm not sure who to pity in this war," Ru said, "the cult or the Dog Warriors."
"What about the two wounded cultists?" Atticus asked.
Kyle shook his head. "They're now two dead cultists. They both went into grand mal seizures and died this evening. Still no ID on them beyond the cult names of Coaxial and Binary."
The seizures were just one of the side effects of the Pixie Dust poisoning. The vast array of deadly symptoms had made it difficult to first determine that the deaths of so many young men were linked. Oddly, not a single woman had fallen victim to the drug.
"So that leaves the female cultist."
"So far the police have no ID on her beyond her cult name of Ascii," Kyle said. "She's been transferred to Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham."
"So we can get to her tomorrow," Ru said.
"Most likely," Atticus said. "What else did you find out?"
"Well, the Temple of New Reason was founded by a William Harris, who called himself Core. Harris and Zlotnikov were both originally from Butler, Pennsylvania. Homeland has been tracking the cult for about a year; during that time, they've been in Boston, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Core was killed early Saturday morning when the boat he was driving at high speeds hit a barge. FBI reports are weirdly muddled about what happened, but apparently the cult planned to do some kind of human sacrifice on an island and there was a shootout, an explosion, an extensive fire, two boating accidents, a drowning, and then some kind of vandalism of the crime scene afterward."
"Everything but cotton candy and fireworks," Ru muttered.
"That was just Saturday morning. Friday there were two other bombings linked to the cult." Kyle checked his PDA again. "An Iron Mountain storage facility and a mansion in Butler where the cult had been living."
"Any forwarding address?" Ru asked.
Kyle shook his head. "The FBI thinks that Harris's second in command, a man they know only by the name of Ice, has taken the cult into hiding. The Pittsburgh police have a cult member who has turned state's evidence; she says that Ice and several of the surviving cult members are from the Boston area."
"Ukiah was in Pittsburgh," Atticus realized. "He called the Pittsburgh hospital and the car that we found him in had Pennsylvania plates."
"Oh, yeah, your brother's name is smeared all through this." Kyle waved the PDA.
But they didn't know his name—did they? "What is his name?"
"Ukiah Oregon."
"Like the town?" Atticus had asked. "Ukiah, Oregon?"
Atticus groaned. Ukiah had told him his name—he just hadn't realized it. "Did you run a priors on him?"
"There was a missing person's report filed on Sunday by a Samuel Anne Killington of Pendleton, Oregon—I'm not sure what her connection to him is—but other than that, he's clean."
Atticus sagged back in his chair. Clean. What the hell was he supposed to make of that? A Dog Warrior who
wasn't wanted?
"According to the report," Kyle continued, "Ukiah had been in Ohio when he disappeared. There was another explosion in that area—a farmhouse leveled Sunday night—and another bonfire site found on the land yesterday morning. The owners of the farm are missing, presumed murdered. Dental records on the human remains found at the bonfire site are being checked."
Okay, the cultists were vicious little bastards, all the way around.
Ru made notes on his PDA and eyed them now. "So it looks like Ice fled Pittsburgh for Ohio, and Ukiah followed. The cult and the Pack fight, Ukiah is killed, and the cult heads back to home turf."
"Looks like." Kyle nodded his consensus.
Atticus frowned. "We'll skip over 'how does the cult know he'll come back from the dead.' After talking to the Iron Horses, it's obvious that my healing abilities are not as secret as we thought they were. But why did the cult take Ukiah with them?"
"Maybe they were going to ransom him," Kyle said.
"Maybe they planned to hold him hostage against the Pack," Ru guessed. "The Pack certainly seem like they'll plow through anything to get him back."
That would be more gratifying if it hadn't been him that they had plowed through. This led Atticus back, however, to the need to stay ahead of the Dog Warriors.
"There's two things here," Atticus said. "First is that the cult might be our shooters. We need to run through the DVD, pull out mug shots of our perps, and compare them to known cult members. Just to be thorough, we can check against the Pack too, but I didn't see a match."
"Check," Kyle said.
"The second is seeing what the state police, the FBI, and any other organizations have on the cult in the Boston area. They might have returned to an old haunt."
Ru nodded and made a note.
"My finding my brother doesn't change anything. This drug is a poison killing everyone coming in contact with it. We've got to shut it down fast."
Chapter Six
Massachusetts Correctional Institution
At Framingham
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Framingham proved to be a sprawling industrial town with a heavy Brazilian population. Leaving Kyle to dig through databases, Atticus and Ru used the Jag's GPS system to thread through the heart of the town to the women's prison.
Like the state of Massachusetts itself, MCI Framingham was small and orderly. Screened from the road by a stand of cattails, the prison was a modern redbrick facility with pale gold bricks highlighting the windows. Exercise yards winged the buildings, and a triple row of concertina wire shimmered bright silver in the weak sun. Storm clouds scudded across the sky, cloaking it with gray.
There was a bite of winter to the brittle morning. Atticus's breath frosted as he locked the Jag, and he remembered with a flash of remorse that Ukiah had spent the night out in the cold with a shattered arm. It seemed like his brother was never far from his mind. It had taken ruthless determination last night to ignore all the answers on Ukiah they might find in Kyle's data flood and focus instead on the cult activities in the Boston area.
As he and Ru stopped to sign in, they found David Brukman signing out. They had worked with the ATF agent a number of times; drugs and guns were a common mix, with one often used to buy the other.
Atticus nodded to Brukman, letting Ru do the shaking of hands and the friendly greeting, while he occupied his hands with signing in. If he could, he avoided pressing flesh with people.
"What are you doing here?" Ru effortlessly made small talk.
"I was transferred up to Boston last year." Brukman took back his gun from the guards. "Pittsburgh FBI field office notified us Monday that a gun-happy religious cult just moved back into the area and they bombed the hell out of Pittsburgh when they left."
"Temple of New Reason," Atticus guessed.
"You here for Ascii too?" Securing his gun, Brukman knew them well enough not to push for a handshake from Atticus. "We heard you took a hit in Buffalo but no details. Who went down? Anyone I know?"
Ru glanced to Atticus. The DEA was sitting on the information to protect Atticus's team. If the ATF was after the Temple of New Reason, though, they might be caught in the crossfire between the cult and the Pack.
"It was Scroggins' team," Atticus said quietly. "All three dead."
"Shit." Brukman's gaze hardened. "The Temple were the shooters?"
"We don't know yet." Ru dropped his voice to a whisper. "Scroggins' team was set up to buy a drug that we've since traced back to the cult. They're using bikers as go-betweens."
Brukman nodded, glancing about to see if anyone was listening.
"The shooters are heavily armed and ruthless," Atticus warned. "No ID on them yet, but we just found out that the Pack is going to war against the Temple."
Brukman surprised Atticus by admitting, "The Pittsburgh FBI field office gave us the heads-up on that. I don't know what the hell the Temple was thinking, except maybe they didn't know anything about the Pack. You don't fuck with them."
Atticus laughed at the truth of this, but Brukman misunderstood.
"Don't try anything with them, Steele. I know your team is good, but the Pack has spotted every undercover agent we've ever tried to get close to them and we've lost a lot of good people to them—one way or another."
"What do you mean?" Ru asked.
"Usually they disappear without a trace." Brukman shook his head, seeming confounded. "But sometimes—and this never makes sense, no matter how many times I say it—they join the Pack."
". . . a couple dozen can take the walk in the woods with the Pack, maybe one will come back out changed, one of them . . ."
Had the Pack somehow transformed the ATF agents? Made them inhuman? Made them . . . werewolves?
"What do you have on the Temple?" Ru changed the subject away from the Pack.
"Not much," Brukman admitted. "We were just starting to investigate them earlier this year when they dropped off the face of the planet. Homeland tracked them to Buffalo but they moved again; FBI says that the Temple grabbed a Homeland agent and maimed him." Brukman made a snick noise while chopping down on his left wrist. "They've reattached the hand but—you know—it's never the same."
Perhaps the cult didn't understand Ukiah's nature if they routinely kidnapped and brutalized people.
"Any idea where the cult is now that they're back in this area?" Ru got a shake of Brukman's head. "What did you find out from Ascii?"
Brukman shook his head with a look of disgust. "So far she's clammed up tight to everyone; no one has been able to get her to say anything past her name and some Temple of New Reason rhetoric."
"Who all has talked to her?"
"Me, the state police, and an agent from the Pittsburgh FBI field office. Special Agent Zheng. Oh, there's a real number for you. Very cool. Very collected. You get the impression ice wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"Ouch."
Brukman glanced over Atticus's shoulder and jerked his chin up to indicate someone walking up behind him. "Speak of the devil."
Atticus turned to follow the gaze.
Agent Zheng wore FBI black with stylish perfection. She came only to his shoulder, but there was nothing fragile about her; under the black silk of her expensive pantsuit, she had a trim, athletic body. Her hair was perfectly straight, glossy black of Asian stock, but her eyes were gray and only vaguely Asian in shape. She looked at him with a gaze that gave nothing away about what she was thinking.
"Agent Steele," Agent Zheng greeted him. "They told me I could find you here."
They must have given her a very good description of him, though he supposed there weren't a lot of Native American federal agents in New England.
"Agent Zheng," he said to prove that she didn't have one up on him.
"The DEA wants a go at Ascii." Bitch though she might be, Brukman seemed eager to please the FBI agent.
"I heard." Agent Zheng kept her gray gaze on Atticus. "I need to speak to you about that. Can we talk privately?"
"In regard to?" Atticus wondered how she had heard when they had told no one.
"To be quite frank, I believe you're the only one who has a chance of getting anywhere with Ascii, but perhaps only in the first minutes of your discussion. Considering that you'll be able to ask only a handful of questions before she shuts down again, I would like to see that advantage be utilized to the utmost."
"Meaning?"
Agent Zheng flicked her gaze to Brukman, who was listening to their conversation. "I mean that in all probability, I can answer any question you may have, and there are questions of vital importance regarding things you know nothing about that need to be answered."
"While the FBI might think itself the fount of all knowledge, I doubt very much you know the answers to my questions."
"You might be surprised."
Frankly he was getting sick of surprises. Certainly there was one piece of information he knew that she didn't.
"The biker jacket in the truck of the cultist's car—do you know what they did to the Dog Warrior who wore it?"
"Yes," Agent Zheng said.
He should learn not to play word games—a case of going unarmed to battle. Atticus waited for more information, but none was forthcoming. Prosecuting attorneys must love her on the stand.
Ru took pity on him and asked, "What do you know about Pixie Dust?"
Agent Zheng flicked a look at Ru, and then returned her focus to Atticus. "Invisible Red?"
That was what Ukiah had called the drug.
"Yes," Atticus said.
"I know that the cult is manufacturing it," Zheng said. "And selling it to the Iron Horses, who are in turn redistributing it up and down the East Coast."
"How do you know that?" Atticus asked.
"I have my sources. If we're going to continue this conversation, I suggest we move to a more private place. We could walk outside."
She leveled a cold look at Brukman.
The ATF agent took the clue and saved face by glancing at his watch. "Well, I've got to run. Have fun, kids." With a wink, he took off.
Just beyond the parking lot was a small pond with Canada geese and a fence to keep out visitors. Zheng led Atticus and Ru around the prison to a country road that ran behind the prison. Across the road were horse pastures and well-kept barns. A sign identified the farm as the home of the National Lancers, and a memory attached to the bright sound of marching bands told him that they were a mounted honor guard.
