Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4)

by W. D. Gagliani

  Chapter Sixteen

  Schlosser

  1944

  Chelmno, on the Polish border

  He waited for the wolf to return. The conditioning had taken quite well with this one. They could barely control their own impulses, so it was almost an impossibility to expect that he would have been able to train them as if they were dogs.

  But this one had shown a good response to both the training and the experiments. Even though it spent most of its time as a wolf in excruciating pain, it was almost ready to display to that insufferable bore vonStumpfahren.

  Schlosser imagined the exhibition. Like his own field trials, he would use prisoners let loose into the frozen forest as prey. In one swoop, he could proudly display both how well his conditioning of the Werwolf beasts took root, and also how well his silver injection therapy and its offshoots had prepared them to survive wounds inflicted by the mysteriously lethal element.

  No one who knew of the werewolf gene understood why silver caused the reaction it did when it was shot, stabbed, or injected into the subject’s bloodstream. The burning suffered by the unfortunate guinea pig spanned the gamut from minor, when the amount was minuscule, to devastating. At the upper end of the range, the subject died a terrible death as his inner organs, veins, and muscles burned like fuses melting flesh, tissue, and bone.

  Schlosser had gone through several dozen subjects this way, carefully studying how each wound-infliction affected the subhumans whose bodies became wolves.

  And he had gone farther, noting how a non-lethal bite spread the evil malady—perhaps through infected saliva—to the bite’s recipient. During the next full moon cycle, those bitten would inevitably become wolves themselves, completely disoriented and confused by their new condition. The scientist observed these subjects as they went into the Change, using specially constructed cement cells outfitted with double-thick panes of aircraft glass.

  Let Mengele match that!

  His rival for the Führer’s favor had manipulated himself into a perfect position of power. But Schlosser’s work would ensure the survival of the Reich and its Fatherland where Mengele’s could not.

  Since they were research subjects, Schlosser considered each of those bitten victims expendable—and he used them to further his silver aversion therapy research, most often by torturing them until they died, their screams filling the soundproof cellblock of first Treblinka camp and later Chelmno, where he had been forced to move reluctantly when the former extermination camp was ordered closed and razed.

  Thinking of this made the taste in Schlosser’s mouth bitter and hard to swallow.

  Here in Chelmno—on the border between occupied Poland and the portion of old Poland known as West Prussia—he had been forced to make do with the insanely spread-out camp functions. At the Treblinka facility, a perfectly suitable, thickly wooded forest spread from the camp’s perimeter and allowed for his field experiments done under cover of darkness and moonlight, away from prying eyes thanks to the special death’s head SS guards sworn to secrecy. But now the local wooded area was four kilometers away from the Chelmno manor house that housed the administration, the extermination facilities, and his larger cellblock and laboratory.

  At the perimeter of the forest camp facility, where mass graves were dug, Schlosser had directed the construction of a satellite research facility housed in a series of transportable huts. From here, he would release specially selected prisoners to provide sport and prey for his “hybrids” and, he hoped with increasing excitement, to further his research into extending the man-wolves’ tolerance to the pain caused by the dreaded silver.

  The old legends were correct, he had written. The why may be a point of debate, but modern science will find a solution to reverse this effect, which will result in hardier shapeshifting subjects for the Werwolf Division and, in future, for the entire German armed forces.

  His proposal to the Führer had emphasized the practical applications of werewolves who could be trained like dogs, which Germans had been doing for ages, and who would be impervious to the one substance dangerous to them.

  A race of super-werewolves was in sight, and it would be Klaus Schlosser who created it.

  He would be celebrated as the greatest German scientist in history, father of a whole race. And therefore savior of the Aryan race.

  When he squinted, he saw statues of himself in all major German capitals of the world. But for now he went about his usual end-of-the-day procedure, selecting a half dozen inmates healthy enough to withstand his experimental procedures, then set about preparing to have his current favorite werewolf bite them in order to provide the next cycle of experiments.

  One of the inmates he selected became violent after being brought into the facility, and Schlosser smiled grimly at the subhuman’s struggles. He called back the guards, who owed only him allegiance.

  “Hold this one down,” he ordered, and the two hulking SS men did so with their muscular arms. The prisoner continued to rave in a foreign tongue. Schlosser curled his lip. It sounded like a stream of an inferior language, perhaps something Slavic.

  “Silence!” he roared.

  But the prisoner paid him no mind, half-babbling and half-muttering when he wasn’t screaming.

  Schlosser scooped a used syringe from a tray, drew in a column of air, and plunged the needle into the inmate’s neck. Even though the struggling form nearly broke the syringe, Schlosser was able to press the plunger home.

  The shouter’s eyes rolled up into his head, and in a few moments the convulsions began. Schlosser watched with some casual interest. There was always something to learn, even from common animals such as this specimen. The guards held the beast until he expired, finally, his mouth rimed with white specks.

  Schlosser motioned for them to clear his laboratory of the corpse. Expressionless, they complied with economic movements, dragging out the slug for disposal in the usual manner. Then the scientist gathered his journals and notes for the day and locked them in his safe. He thought of his wife Gerte and his teenage son, Hans, two hundred kilometers away, and smiled slightly. He would see them soon. In the meantime, he would seek a meal in the manor house officers’ mess hall, then return to his small but relatively luxurious flat in town until tomorrow, when he could continue the experiments so valuable to the Fatherland.

  Perhaps in the next year he would bring his son to work with him as an assistant. The boy already showed signs of an interest in the sciences, and Schlosser could think of no more noble a cause than that which he had been given by that boorish Prussian, vonStumpfahren. In his hands, and his family’s, perhaps lay the means to win this war which—if rumors were true—had begun to go badly.

  His meal was forgettable—a glue-like stew of turnips, potatoes, and gristly lumps of meat he could not identify.

  But at his flat, Anneliese awaited him, and what she wore brought a smile to his tired face. The ivory phallus protruding from between her muscular thighs was ready, slick with Vaseline. The paddle she wielded on his bare buttocks brought the sort of joy he found in his laboratory. Later, he screamed joyfully into his favorite leather gag as she sweated and grunted behind him.

  And the night was young.

  When the air raid sirens started their wail, leaving was the last thing on his mind. Coming was the first.

  Bombs like thunder sounded in the distance.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sigfried

  He was preparing his last day testimony—well, closing statements, really—for when those congressmen cowed by the covert photographs would let him publicly off the hook. He would be humble and accept their implied apology to show how big-hearted even the CEO of Wolfpaw Security Services could be. He would be very convincing, staring into the cameras arrayed in a half circle in front of his table, and tell the people of America that they could trust Wolfpaw and its leadership to fight their wars for them.

  And then he would continue to seed the military services with his own people, to prepare f
or the day when true command of the country’s military would be handed over to Wolfpaw officers—field-marshals, he wanted to call them—and the bloodless coup would have begun. It would take a decade or two, but the takeover would gradually account for all of government, not only the military.

  He assumed it would be the last day. The photographs of helpless, innocent families would have done their best work overnight, while the bastards tried to sleep, the implied threat gathering force as the night darkened and the hours dragged toward a much more dangerous dawn.

  His software gave him a blip. New report filed on the secure server, but not Mordred. Had to be Wilcox. The big team leader had been trying hard to get back into Sigfried’s good graces since he’d been outplayed at the Eagle River casino. Once, Sigfried had considered him for conversion, making Wilcox a possible Mordred. But his lapse had cost him status, rank, trust—you name it.

  Sigfried typed the appropriate logins and prompts and soon had the software confirming it was Wilcox’s voice, safely unscrambled, relating a brief report.

  “Report starts.” Wilcox’s voice was reduced to a tinny babble by the small laptop speakers. “New player needs background check. Seems to be helping the cop, Nick Lupo, against operative known as Mordred. Name is Simonson, Geoff.” He spelled it slowly. “Will follow up after further surveillance. Report ends. Wilcox out.”

  Simonson? he thought. What the hell?

  Why was that familiar?

  Sigfried keyboarded himself to a different login, slipped in his password, and clicked into the Wolfpaw database. He waited for the search engine to return a page, read it and smiled.

  This is a good twist.

  Smiling placidly, he went back to work on his statement for the cameras and the treasonous congressmen. And woman.

  Let’s not forget her.

  He had something special planned for her family. He hoped he’d get to put it in motion.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Giovanni

  1944

  He blinked as they led him out of the air raid shelter they called Sanctuary.

  It was dark already, but even so it was brighter than in the candle-lit cavern below the bombed-out tenement whose ruined brick walls had caved in and hid the several entrance tunnels the partisan brigade had dug.

  After the all clear, Corrado had assigned two men to accompany him to his apartment, where he hoped to find Franco unhurt. Alone and frightened, perhaps, but unhurt.

  He prayed as he had, indeed, never prayed before.

  He also prayed they would not face any werewolves.

  Giovanni followed the tall, strangely nicknamed, bespectacled werewolf killer Turco (who didn’t appear in the least Turkish) and the taciturn hulking giant of a man named Manfredo. They had given him a newer German P-38 pistol he had again tucked into his belt and a commando-style knife, and in his hands he carried another Breda submachine gun.

  Just like that, it seemed, Giovanni had become a partisan.

  Porca fortuna!

  He was content to know Maria was as safe as she could be in the shelter, which was extensive and well stocked, but his son’s safety was on his mind. And, if he were honest with himself, his own—now if he were stopped by the Germans, he would be summarily executed. Orders had come down from the local High Command that stipulated all units consider any armed Italian a partisan and as such a threat to the defense of the city and outlying territories.

  Corrado had shown him a bloody, tattered telegraph flimsy captured from a German—now dead, surely—which made the orders official.

  And so here he was, creeping through the ruined buildings on this street, hoping that when he reached his own there would be buildings left standing. No one expected bombs to be accurate all the time, but the amount of civilian devastation ringing the port was incredible. Parts of buildings spilled out debris and belongings, some still smoldering from this last Allied bombing run, which had partly missed the harbor after all.

  Here and there he saw a bloody arm or leg protruding from piles of brick and cement rubble. Some places, confused survivors stumbled over the broken remainders of their lives, searching for loved ones or memories to salvage, or just trying to recover from the trauma of the war suddenly intruding on their lives.

  Giovanni followed Turco and Manfredo as they led him in redundant zigzags down the street.

  Turco held up a hand and they stopped, crouching low behind the remains of a brick wall. The thin, bearded academic didn’t look like a seasoned partisan, but Corrado had called him one of the best.

  Giovanni couldn’t see what had caused Turco to stop them so suddenly.

  But then a match flared only a couple meters away on the other side of the broken wall, and Giovanni made out a reflection on a German coal-shuttle helmet and the glint of a long bayonet fitted to the muzzle of a Mauser rifle. A sentry, posted to catch partisans as they crawled from their holes, most likely.

  Posted to catch us, Giovanni thought, his throat seizing up and his heart racing.

  Turco pressed his index finger on his lips, then waved Manfredo up closer. His hand told Giovanni to wait there, under cover.

  The two partisans crawled silently along their side of the wall until they reached a demolished corner. Shattered bricks lay all about. Giovanni could barely see, but these men had lived as outlaws for so long he assumed they’d developed night vision. They were now positioned immediately behind the unsuspecting sentry, as far as he could tell.

  Suddenly there was a rattle of equipment and clothes and debris, as Turco went in high and dragged the German backward, his hand clasped tightly over the unfortunate’s face to keep him from shouting.

  Manfredo lunged in from the side with the silver-bladed knife, plunging its length into the German’s side a half dozen times. While Turco pulled the dying soldier back over the wall, Manfredo finished the job by slitting his throat with one savage motion.

  They laid the bleeding, dying soldier on a bed of shattered bricks and raided his pockets and belt pouches for ammunition and food, all of which Manfredo silently fed into a bag he carried slung over one shoulder.

  Turco nodded at Giovanni and they were on their way.

  The whole encounter had taken less than a half minute.

  And the local commander would likely round up innocent civilians and have them shot in retaliation when the murdered sentry was found.

  Giovanni gritted his teeth.

  He had to find Franco. There was no other way to assure the child wouldn’t be rounded up and killed. Giovanni never entertained the thought his son might be dead. No, his intuition said the boy was fine, maybe at home, maybe hiding out with his friend. But as time passed, he knew the chances of something befalling his son increased exponentially.

  All he had to do was remember how his day had begun, and how it had ended. His world was tilted, and he teetered on the edge, ready to fall. His mind was cracking, and along with that his will to live—if his son was dead, would he not be a failure?

  They continued, carefully avoiding the flickering light of fires that marked where gas lines had erupted, crossing from shadow to shadow, occasionally hearing screams of pain and fear from people trapped in the ruins of their buildings. Giovanni’s heart cried, but Turco motioned them on, indicating that they had to ignore the victims or they would themselves be sacrificed.

  “We stop, we die,” he whispered.

  Soon they left the devastated section behind, with only a glow from the fires to mark what they had seen. As they approached Giovanni’s neighborhood, he was grateful to see that his building still stood—a seven-story, stucco-sided tenement with solid marble floors and a heavy clay tile roof. It looked intact, unharmed, and his heart swelled at the thought of finding Franco at home.

  “Watch out!” Turco cried, and lunged past.

  Giovanni saw the glint of silver.

  And heard snarling behind him.

  He turned.

  By the time he managed to whirl around, the wolf
was on him.

  But Turco had also lunged at the attacking beast and intercepted the muscular body in mid-air. They both crashed into Giovanni, and the three went down in a tangle of arms and claws and fangs.

  Giovanni dropped the Breda and tried to wrestle the wolf with his bare hands, while Turco attempted to bring his magical blade to bear and still avoid the slashing teeth and claws. The wolf was damnably quick, though, outmaneuvering both men and keeping the three a rolling, tumbling blur that the giant Manfredo could do nothing about.

  Giovanni could only keep the jaws away from his throat by pushing the red-eyed head away. Turco struggled with the sheathed dagger. If the priest had been right, then the wood scabbard was actively shielding the wolf from the feared silver on the blade. Giovanni tried to shift the balance of the three squirming bodies to give Turco an advantage, a chance to draw the blade.

  But the wolf seemed to predict each attempt, and Giovanni could either avoid the snapping jaws or help Turco, but not both. And the wolf knew it. He could read the monster’s intelligence in its demon eyes, which were neither animal nor entirely human.

  Turco first grunted when the wolf managed to claw his face, but his grunt turned to a tortured scream of pain as his brain realized that his cheek had been torn open and his jaw dislocated. Right then, lying below the struggling forms, still barely managing to deflect the dangerous fangs, Giovanni realized with horror that the monster’s swipe had ripped Turco’s left eye from its socket, and it hung from its optic nerve, leaving behind a black hole in which he swore he could see hell itself.

  “Shoot him!” he shouted at Manfredo, who was frozen in place with his pistol extended, trying to draw a bead on the monster without striking either human. “Damn you, shoot him!”

  But it was too late.

  Turco opened his mouth and screamed incoherently as the wolf suddenly gained the advantage and its snapping jaws tore the partisan’s clothing to shreds and dug savagely into his belly like a shark shaking a smaller fish.