Watcher: Based on the Apocalypse (World of Darkness : Werewolf)

by Charles L. Grant

  His first thought was, Jesus, it’s a trap.

  The man seated at the head gave him a half-smile. “Welcome, my friend,” and nodded Richard to the low, heavy chair at the foot of the table.

  Richard didn’t accept the invitation. He moved to the offered chair, but remained on his feet, gripping the bowed top lightly. The door was still open, and he made no move to close it.

  He didn’t have to: it closed on its own seconds after he touched his chair.

  “Richard, are you well?”

  “Well enough, John.”

  Even seated, John Chesney was tall, with sharp planes and deep shadows in his face that made him appear as if a lifetime of dissipation had caught up with him overnight. His hair was thick, pure white, and brushed straight back had gotten from the movies. He also supposed Chesney believed it lent him an air of authority.

  He didn’t need it.

  He had eyes that could boil blood if he ever lost his temper.

  To Richard’s right, beside Chesney, was Maurice Poulard, a stocky man with a florid, pudgy face that left little room for his eyes. His gray suit looked like silk; his red club tie undoubtedly was. He was bald; deliberately bald. In his right hand he held a lace-edged handkerchief he used to mop his scalp, to wave a point, and to touch to his oddly thin lips whenever he wanted to hide what his mouth might reveal. He waved the handkerchief now, his voice reed-thin: “Oh, do sit, Richard. We’re not going to bite, you know.”

  The woman on his left laughed silently. She wore a tailored burgundy suit, a ruffled cream blouse, and a huge ruby ring on her left hand. Her hair was short and brushed back over her ears, a style that suited her ageless features. She could have been thirty, could have been sixty, but apparently that didn’t matter to those reputed to be her lovers. “You’re confused, dear,” she said, her voice soothing and smooth.

  He nodded. “I am, Vi.”

  “Then sit. Please. John has things to tell you, and we don’t have much time.”

  “The others?” he asked as he obeyed.

  Poulard waved the handkerchief dismissively “Not here, not coming.”

  Richard almost said, that’s impossible, but the look on the man’s face stopped him.

  He had been right—he shouldn’t have knocked, he shouldn’t have come in.

  This was the chamber of the Warders of the Veil. Seldom used, but when it was, it held a representative of most of the thirteen tribes of the Garou.

  Never just three.

  Never.

  His unease increased as he waited for Chesney to make up his mind when to begin. The man was an actor. Nothing he did was done without consideration of its dramatic effect, including the annoying, overhead lighting. It was he who had named the group, he—along with Viana Jaye, Maurice, and two others now dead—who had seen the need, and he who had recruited Richard into their midst.

  The reason, in the beginning, had been simple and right: Gaia was dying, and along with her, the Garou.

  The Earth, in spite of the best efforts of some, had begun to flounder in the aftermath of steadily increasing populations. Urban centers expanded with little planning, waste was more stockpiled than converted for reuse, and what was once pristine had become irrevocably soiled.

  The Garou, because they were so intricately involved with the system that supported both Man and Gaia, thus found themselves in danger as well. Their numbers had never been that great in the first place; now each of the tribes found themselves much smaller, with less protection, fewer chances of survival.

  The Veil was that which separated men from the Garou. For men, Richard and the others were the stuff of legends and tales told around campfires— werewolves. Man-beasts. Evil creatures that stalked movie screens and novels and children’s nightmares in autumn. As long as it remained that way, the Garou could manage, doing what they could to keep Gaia from collapsing.

  When the Veil was lifted, however, and however briefly and accidentally, something had to be done.

  The Warders had been created when it was evident that recent breaches of the Veil weren’t accidental at all.

  Chesney put his glass down and cleared his throat.

  Richard glanced at the others, leaned back, and said with a brief smile, “John, I’m falling asleep.”

  Vi laughed; Maurice scowled.

  Chesney at least had the grace to look embarrassed, caught in his own acting. He folded his hands on the table and cleared his throat again. “Richard,” he said, “there’s a rogue.”

  Two vicious murders in Tennessee, near Chattanooga and the Georgia border, and at least two more missing, Chesney explained. Even discounting the natural hysteria in the media concerning such brutal and puzzling acts, it was clear to the Warders that a rogue had moved into the area, and he had to be stopped before the police caught him.

  Richard didn’t respond; it wasn’t expected of him.

  Every so often, it happened: a Garou from any tribe could break under the pressure of either living in both worlds, or keeping his pact to protect Gaia. In this way, they were no different from humans— they had their weak links, and sometimes they snapped.

  It was his job to make sure the rogue was never caught, dead or alive, by humans. If he failed, the truth of the Garou would be out; it didn’t take a genius to figure out what would happen then.

  So far, he hadn’t failed.

  But what he still didn’t understand was why the full group wasn’t here. The first known attack had been back in October, the latest only last week, the disappearances sometime between. Someone should have been investigating from the first killing—plenty of time to convene a strategy session, and to contact him. Waiting this long to suspect a rogue …

  Still, he held his peace. While the others were of tribes whose lives revolved around packs, he was called Silent Strider. His kind were loners. Travelers. As such, and as now, most of the other Garou either held them in mild contempt, or outright distrust that sometimes bordered on fear.

  A wolf, alone, wasn’t natural.

  Rogues they could understand; someone like Richard they couldn’t.

  Vi dusted a finger across the tabletop. “There’s more, of course.”

  He smiled at her wryly. “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Poulard snapped. “Get on with it. I’m a busy man.” His handkerchief flapped at the others. “This is getting us nowhere.”

  Chesney’s face darkened briefly, his eyes narrowing as he turned toward Poulard and silently demanded he hold his tongue. Poulard snarled but sat back, almost pouting.

  Well, Richard thought; well, well.

  Chesney turned his attention back to Richard, all signs of displeasure gone in a blink. “You know there are humans who suspect who and what we are.”

  Richard nodded impatiently. He didn’t need, nor did he appreciate, a history lesson. Yes, there were humans who suspected what lay beyond the Veil; yes, some had actually begun to accumulate evidence of it; and yes, some had the potential to be more than a small threat to the Garou’s existence. But they didn’t work together; they didn’t share what they knew. All had their own agendas, and so far, luckily, cooperation hadn’t been part of it.

  “Well, there’s something else,” Chesney said, and hesitated. Vi whispered something Richard couldn’t catch, and the older man nodded. “The rogue. We think he might be a trap. We… think he’s out there, specifically, to lure you into the open.”

  “Somebody wants you dead, Richard,” Vi said.

  “Or more likely,” Poulard added impatiently, and without much sympathy, “somebody wants you in hand so you can lead them to us.” He folded the handkerchief into a rectangle on the table and carefully smoothed out its wrinkles with the side of his hand. “It is also possible that this someone is one of us.”

  “No,” he said without having to think. He looked at the others. “That’s impossible.”

  Poulard stared at him without raising his head. “Is it, Richard? Is i
t really?”

  “Of course it is,” he said automatically.

  The tribes, while all Garou, weren’t always in harmony. They had their common goal, but the means to achieve it were often sources of dissension, and causes of rivalries that in some cases were generations old.

  But nothing like this.

  No matter how bad relations got, tribes didn’t go to war with one another.

  Not at the risk of rending the Veil.

  He shifted uncomfortably when no one reacted. “Who told you this nonsense?”

  No one answered.

  He shook his head in disgust and stared at the wood surface immediately in front of him. Despite the high polish, there was no reflection, just the grain. It didn’t give him any answers, or any inspiration.

  “This rogue,” Chesney said quietly, “has to be brought back, I’m afraid.”

  That snapped Richard’s head up. “What?”

  It was difficult enough to hunt down one of your own kind, one who had been overcome by rage-filled madness; the outcome was always the same. It had to be. There was no cure for the sickness that created a rogue, and no safe way or place to detain him. But to say that he had to be captured was madness of its own.

  “There’s no other way. We need to know, Richard. We need to know.”

  Poulard pushed his chair away from the table, to the edge of the reach of his light. He leaned back and folded his hands over his stomach. “It’s quite simple You do what you always do, Richard, except that you don’t kill him.” He smiled without humor. “Do you think you can handle that?”

  “That’s not the point,” he said.

  “Oh, but it is.” The smile remained. “Unless you don’t feel that you can. Succeed, that is. Feeling a little old these days?”

  Richard looked to Vi, but she too had retreated, and all he could see of her without straining were her hands and her torso. It was as if someone had suddenly cut off her head.

  “That’s not the point either, Maurice,” he said, struggling to keep his temper intact. “But if I’m even going to consider this … this assignment, I’ll need to know more.” He looked directly at Chesney. “Like, who else I’ll be up against, if what you say is true.”

  “Unknown,” was all Chesney answered.

  “Then why do you suspect it may be one of us?”

  “Our privilege,” Poulard said quickly.

  Right, Richard thought; catch a rogue, but wear a blindfold while you’re at it, and don’t worry about your back, you don’t need to know who’s got the knife.

  Chesney coughed lightly into a fist. “You’ll have to leave tonight, Richard. We can’t waste any more time arguing. Or,” he added pointedly to Maurice, “speculating, lust bring us what we ask.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  Vi slipped back into the light. “I fear, Richard, that’s not an option in this case.” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “And if I can’t,” he persisted.

  “We’ll get someone else,” Poulard answered blithely.

  Richard inhaled slowly, but said nothing more. It was an empty threat. He knew as well as Maurice did that there was no one else. The Warders were select. The only way he could be replaced was if he was killed.

  Still … “Well, if you do, Maurice, be sure to let him know that someone’s been poking around out here.”

  “What?” It was Poulard’s turn to slip back into the light. “What are you talking about?”

  Richard gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “It may be nothing, but I’ve had the feeling all day that someone’s been following me.” He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed the ragged swatch onto the table. “I found this just before I arrived.”

  Poulard slammed a palm on the table. “You irresponsible son of a bitch! Why didn’t you say anything when you got here?”

  “Because he’s gone, Maurice,” he answered calmly.

  Chesney stared down the length of the table at the piece of cloth. “How do you know, Richard?”

  “Because I do, John.”

  Poulard mopped his scalp nervously. “And you didn’t go after him?”

  “I had been summoned, remember?”

  “And the danger?”

  Richard’s voice flattened; the fat man was rapidly getting on his nerves. “If there had been danger, I would have ended it.” He had had enough. He stood, picked up the swatch and his jacket, and held out his left hand. “John?”

  Chesney hesitated before taking an envelope from an inside pocket and sliding down the table. Richard picked it up, folded it, and stuffed it into his hip pocket, the move deliberately casual, just to taunt Poulard. Then he pushed his chair aside and strode to the door, opened it, and turned around when Vi said his name.

  “You’ll do it, won’t you?”

  “Like I said, Vi—if I can.” But he relented when he saw her stricken expression. “Don’t worry. Anything else will only be a last resort.”

  He stepped into the hallway.

  The door closed silently behind him.

  For a long moment he didn’t move. He could hear raised voices in the chamber, Poulard’s in argument, Chesney’s snapping. A trickle of ice touched the length of his spine.

  That wasn’t simple rivalry in there.

  He didn’t need extra senses to know it was fear.

  There were no shapes or shadows now; the night had taken them, and had replaced them with long stretches of nothing but the reach of the old car’s headlamps, turning the tarmac gray, blending the trees along the highway into a mottled, black wall.

  He almost made it to Knoxville before weariness overtook him, abrupt and unexpected. It less on the early start and all the driving he’d done, and the startling realization that he had been barely aware of the road since leaving Virginia.

  Neither the interstate’s sparse evening traffic nor the darkened landscape had registered except as flashes of headlights, glimpses of illuminated signs pointing this way to fuel, that way to food.

  He had been functioning on automatic, his concentration focused on trying to understand what had really happened at the curious meeting with the Warders. It wasn’t only the assignment—bring the rogue back alive—it had also been almost as if they wanted him in there and gone with as little fuss and discussion as possible.

  That wasn’t like them.

  Most of the time, similar meetings took at least two or three hours, while ramifications were debated, reasons for a Garou’s turning rogue were offered, sides were taken, and demands were made. To a virtual outsider like him, they were almost comical, and would have been had they not been so potentially dangerous for his kind.

  But today had been nothing short of unnerving.

  Currents and undercurrents.

  And not a single mention of Fay.

  He yawned suddenly, and so widely and noisily that he laughed aloud and decided Chattanooga could wait until morning. He needed to sleep before he wound up wrapped against a tree, or nose-down in a ditch.

  He found a Ramada Inn half a mile off the highway just east of Knoxville, and took a room. He had barely set his bag down on a low and long chest of drawers when he began to pace from door to window, over and over. As soon as he caught himself doing it, he went outside, to walk for a while, to stretch his limbs and breathe the night air.

  Despite the weariness, he was restless, too restless to stay in a place with four walls.

  The two-story motel was on a knoll, surrounded by a parking lot that seemed like a moat between the building itself and the woodland around it. The nearest community was a few miles farther north, and the still-hovering cloud cover reflected no lights at all.

  With his jacket open and his hands in his pockets, he walked the perimeter slowly, smelling the pine, the cedar, the earth still damp from a recent light rain. He heard muffled music drifting from the motel’s bar, and from the rooms a voice raised in querulous complaint, someone laughing gently, someone slamming dresser doors; from the highway he h
eard the grumble of a truck.

  He trotted a few steps, then walked again, keeping close to the trees in case someone should look out.

  He wouldn’t be seen; he was as much at home out here as he was in there.

  His third circuit had just begun when he realized that the world had suddenly fallen silent.

  He stopped and cocked his head, straining for a sound, any sound, beyond the rasp of his own breathing.

  It lasted only a few seconds, but it was long enough to remind him, for reasons he couldn’t immediately understand, that his restlessness wasn’t entirely due to the disturbing Roanoke meeting.

  Most of it, he realized, was because it been a while, much too long, since he had last hunted.

  Since he had last taken the form.

  Since he had last marked his prey.

  Since he had last tasted blood.

  A slow smile almost parted his lips. A rumbling in his throat almost tickled.

  A glance at the building, few of the windows lighted, and he wondered what they would think if they heard something howling out here. Would they come out, or would they hide? Investigate, or call for help?

  It was tempting, so wonderfully, dangerously tempting that he might have done it had not a first-floor drapery parted, and he could see a shadow there, someone looking out at the night.

  He sighed for good sense, and headed back to his room.

  Tomorrow, he promised himself; tomorrow night he would allow himself a few hours of freedom.

  For now, however, there was rest to be taken, and maybe a quick call to Fay to find out where she had been, and what she had meant when she had warned him to be careful. But once in the room, he barely had time to take off his clothes before sleep dragged him onto the bed.

  There was only one dream:

  In the desert, in the ruins, the jaws of Anubis dripped blood.

  A faint rumble of thunder echoed across the city, and a flare of pale lightning marked the horizon between the sky and the Pacific.

  In the street, down in the Tenderloin, among the crowds, a trio of well-dressed drunks argued loudly and profanely, while a woman leaning against a lamppost laughingly shrieked for the police. The sidewalks and tarmac reflected the garish neon as if the rain had already arrived. A police car ghosted through, and no one paid it any mind.