“No idea. Our intel said there were only two in town. Had we known…”
I let the thought trail off and no one said anything. I’d been so worried about Erika that I didn’t even think to tail the prisoner van. Then again, since we assumed we had both the Reds, I didn’t think there was a reason to watch it. Popeye glanced at the van and looked over his injured men before responding.
“I’m gonna talk to the rest of my men. If I learn anything useful, I’ll let you know,” he paused for a moment, his eyes meeting mine, “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he said.
I nodded and he patted my shoulder as he left. While it would have been nice and easy to blame the guards for letting us down, the truth was that they weren’t really equipped to deal with supernatural threats. That was the whole reason our team existed. We took ‘em down and they hauled ‘em off, although, we might have to look at shoring up their end of things in the future. I turned towards Vector and glanced down at the new bandages on his arm.
“How’s the arm?”
“Not bad. You all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Better than I thought I’d be honestly. I’m hoping that we can all put our heads together and make some kind of sense out of this day.”
“Not sure you ever make sense out of days like this,” Vector offered.
“Isn’t that the truth. Is there anything here that you want to look at, or should we head down to the library?”
“I’m gonna check out the truck. Maybe I can find something that will point us in a direction,” he said.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll wait here.”
Vector nodded and wandered off towards the truck. He was careful to stay out of the way of the medics as he moved. Sliding his brass goggles on, he examined the doors and the debris from the explosion very carefully. He looked at everything from every angle and direction. Occasionally he’d do that weird invisible 3D shape thing in the air with his hands. I assumed he was making notes about the stuff he was seeing. After the better part of thirty minutes, he finally finished up and headed back over.
“Well, that was helpful,” he said.
I couldn’t help but smile as I caught his sarcastic tone.
“Nothing unique about the blast?”
“Nope. Standard explosive. The kind of thing you can get anywhere on the black market or steal from several military compounds around the world. I’m not even sure it was professionally shaped, so that’s most likely a dead end too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was sloppy. We’re not looking for an expert arms dealer. Probably just a bit of last minute improv once she saw her compatriots get taken,” he said.
“And you didn’t find anything else that might give us a clue as to where they are heading?”
“I found a bunch of red fibers,” he smiled.
“So, like you said, helpful.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, unless you can think of anything else, let’s head to the library. Maybe Freddy found a book called ‘all the answers you ever wanted’ or something.”
“That does sound like it would be helpful,” Vector smirked.
“More helpful than those wolves were.”
“Maybe they slipped Freddy a note after we left.”
“That sounds like our luck.”
“Yeah. Not quite the first day I was hoping for,” Vector said.
“Would it make you feel better to know things normally go worse?”
“Not really.”
“I didn’t think so.”
We both sighed in unison as we entered the elevator. A short jaunt down to sublevel five and we stepped into the library. Left at the seventh row and straight on until we found Freddy and Danny at our favorite table.
CHAPTER 20
They both had their heads buried in books. I assumed Freddy had given Danny the book, and told him what to look for. He does occasionally try and get us involved in his research. Although personally, I’ve done a good job of making it clear that others are better suited for that purpose. I’m mostly here to kick stuff.
“So, we have a team member down, the Creek lost an Alpha, which probably destabilized the packs even more, and the Reds have escaped. I’m really hoping you two have some good news?”
“What?” Both Danny and Freddy said simultaneously.
“Yeah. Turns out our intel sucks. There is a third Red in town and she broke out her classmates. We just came from the van upstairs. Vector didn’t find anything helpful, so I’m really hoping you have turned up something?”
“Dammit,” Danny screamed, slamming his fist down on the table.
“Relax, kid, it ain’t over yet.”
He shook his head and huffed a bit, but didn’t respond. Freddy looked a bit pensive, but he finally spoke up.
“I’ve been thinking about the meeting with the lycanthropes and their accusations. Honestly, I’m not making much headway, but something about the children comment has been nagging at me,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he started, taking off his glasses and absentmindedly cleaning them with a cloth as he spoke, “While a great many atrocities can be attributed to the wolves, they are, more often than not, creatures of honor. I find it troubling that either would stoop to kidnapping children in order to provoke the other.”
“Right, except the Creek are led by a couple of nutjobs. You saw them at the meeting.”
“Yes, the Creek Alphas, well Alpha now, did appear to be slightly unstable. However, I still have trouble believing they would so easily use such barbaric tactics,” Freddy said.
“Are you kidding? We’ve been fighting these yahoos for weeks. They’re not exactly civilized.”
“We are catching them at their worst. Do you truly believe that they are mindless animals? Shifters are people, just like us. Surely we, of all people, can understand that, as we have the privilege of working alongside of one?”
“Erika is not…” I sighed, “Look, I know what you’re saying, and I’m not trying to dismiss them as mindless animals. But didn’t one of you say that the wolves were one of the more plentiful of the shifters? That the force of their lycan genes was probably stronger than that of other shifters? Wouldn’t that make them give in to their animal instincts just a bit more? Especially with this weird anger mojo in the air.”
Freddy nodded, “Yes, that is true. And while I am not trying to discount any of your logic, I am simply suggesting that we don’t ignore a great deal of history. The lycanthrope are a proud people who have lived by a set of laws for centuries. I just think we should keep our minds open to the possibly that they are not behind this.”
“Freddy’s right,” Danny said, “I did my best to scan their thoughts and emotions at that meeting. There was no sense of deception. Rather, it was pure disgust. If I had to guess, I’d say they were pissed at the very accusation that they’d steal children. There was almost a sense of pride, as if they were better than that.”
“Okay, so assuming we believe them, where does that leave us? Someone unknown is taking their children?”
“Probably someone who wants the packs to fight,” Danny offered.
“Right, but why?”
“In order to create a power vacuum? Or perhaps to keep them distracted and oblivious to the actions of a third party,” Freddy said.
“Makes sense. So, we just need to figure out who benefits from this.”
“Well that points us in several directions. The supernatural power structure of DC is vast and complicated. For example…” Freddy tried before Vector cut him off.
“Why take children?” he asked.
“Who knows? Maybe they’re easier to capture, you know, because they’re smaller,” Danny tried.
“Even a young wolf is dangerous,” Vector replied.
I could tell from the expression on his face that he was trying to work something out in his head. I hoped that the experience of an old
er team brought home a clue. Personally, I work better when I’m talking out loud. I didn’t know if Vector was the same way, but just in case, I tried to be helpful.
“You think the kids are significant?”
“Not sure, but it doesn’t sit right,” he replied.
“Why?”
“We just said that these are not normal wolf tactics. So, if you are trying to frame the packs and get them to fight, you’d use something more traditional, right?”
“Right.”
“So, why take children?” Vector repeated.
“You think the needed the kids for something?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Freddy, what are wolf kids good for?”
Freddy’s face looked as unsure as I felt asking the question. It seemed a weird direction to go in, but since we didn’t have anything else, we had to explore it. Plus, Vector was right, something felt off.
“Offhand, nothing springs to mind. I’ll continue to do some research and see if I can turn up anything that may be of help,” he offered.
“Good. Do we have any clue how many kids we’re talking about?”
Vector glanced my way before sliding his bronze goggles over his head. After a few minutes of crazy 3D mime time, he pushed the glasses up onto his forehead and met my eyes.
“I think we’re talking about over a dozen at least. I cross-referenced reports of missing kids with the names of known pack members and got several hits. Almost all of the abductions have occurred during the increase in wolf hostility.”
“Almost all?”
“Yeah, as we might expect, the first couple predate the fighting,” Vector said.
“Right. Obviously, they were the sparks that started the fires. Okay, are there any clues that the police have which might point us towards the bad guys?”
“Nothing,” Vector said, shaking his head, “As you probably know, eyewitness accounts are suspect at best. In this case, we’re dealing with statements even less helpful than normal. There are reports of white, grey, red, and black vans in the area. One person said there was a suspicious looking old station wagon, while another swore there was a multi-colored pickup truck. But, even with this fairly useless information, I’m going to set up an algorithm to search through all the camera footage I can find in the city. Hopefully by cross referencing dates and times I’ll find a few similarities,” Vector said.
“That’s great. How long will that take?”
“A day or two if we’re lucky.”
“No way to speed that up?”
“Unfortunately, no matter how good I am, we are still dealing with infrastructure issues. There are countless servers to access and you don’t want to know about the sheer volume of data that we are dealing with. I’ll work as fast as I can,” he said.
“That’s all we can ask. Thanks. In the meantime, we need to confirm the number of missing kids with the wolves. Just in case Freddy comes across some ritual that uses twenty wolf kids or something, we’ll know we’re on the right track. How did we communicate with them to set up the Circle meeting? Can we do that again?”
“Yeah, we can contact them. I’ll handle it,” Danny said.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. Having been inside their heads, honestly, I think I understand what they’re thinking. Hopefully that will allow me to get as much info as possible,” he finished.
“Okay, get to it.”
Danny nodded and hurried off to call the wolves. I looked over at Freddy holding a book and Vector working his goggles, and I suddenly felt very useless. There had to be something for me to do.
“Okay, if this was a TV show, there’d be criminals somewhere that I could rough up for information. I’d be good at that. Is there somewhere I can do that?”
Freddy looked perplexed and Vector kind of shook his head as he tried to figure out if I was serious. I guess my expression told him that I was.
“There are plenty of places where you could crack skulls, but I have no idea which direction to point you in. If our working premise is that we don’t think the wolves are behind the abductions, then we are left with everyone else. Where would you even start?” Vector asked.
“I don’t know, isn’t there a main bar where all manner of supernatural creatures mingle and break bread? Like that Weasel bar I visited in the Veil?”
“There are several. You want me to pick one out of a hat?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
“Look, I can give you a list of the most popular spots, and we can run through them one by one,” he offered.
“Didn’t you just tell me that you had an absurd amount of data to sort through?”
“Yeah,” Vector scoffed, “But I can do that from anywhere. I’m a walking mobile hotspot, man.”
“And your arm?”
“Do you really think I need both of my arms to be effective?”
“No, but honestly it sounds like you have the best shot at finding us a lead. I’d rather you focus on that for now. I’ll check out the bars.”
“It’s probably a waste to say be careful, huh?” he laughed.
“Nah. I’m always careful. It’s the people who seem intent on putting their faces in the way of my fists that you should worry about,” I winked.
I headed out of the library and up one floor to sublevel four. There was office space there for our team, in case we needed a desk or a computer or just a private place to write reports. Vector sent the list of probable bars to the printer and I snagged the sheet before heading up to Vlad. I thought about visiting Sickbay again, but didn’t see the point. Erika was being looked over as best as she could be.
Vlad was happy to see me and to do a little driving. Vector’s list had seven bars on it and they were scattered all over town. He laid them out in a nice roundabout circular route that would bring us back towards HQ after the last location. I’d wanted to check on everyone before I went home for the night, so I was more than happy to follow his suggestion. I gave Vlad the information, he put it in his GPS, and we were off. As we pulled out of the garage, I gave a friendly salute to the guard who had been helpful earlier. He gave a nod in return. I was sure they would all hate me again tomorrow, but for today, we were calling a truce.
It was early afternoon, and traffic was fairly light for DC. The first location was pretty close, so it didn’t take us long at all to get there. Down Fifteenth Street and a left onto Maine, past the fish market and a quick loop around onto Water Street brought us to the front of Phillips Seafood Buffet. There were a couple of marinas down here and several businesses along the water. But the bar we were looking for was nicely tucked in-between Phillips and a little tennis stadium.
“Okay pal, stay close in case we get some runners.”
“Will do, boss,” he replied.
I hopped out and Vlad drove off. I made my way around the side of Phillips, and sitting right on the back corner, completely unmarked, was a building that you’d never notice if you weren’t looking for it. Made to appear as part of the seafood joint, it was a small separate building. The unmarked door was large and made of sturdy steel. I knocked and a small metal window slid to the side, a pair of large yellow eyes looking through the opening at me. I held up my badge and could feel the reluctance of the nod behind the door. The panel shut, I heard the sound of bolts sliding over, and the door opened.
I stepped inside and the yellow-eyed creature, whose head reminded me a bit of an owl, closed the door behind me. He stood over seven feet tall, with thick arms, and brown feathers covering his body. I was about to ask him where the wild things were, then decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, I looked over the bar in front of me.
It wasn’t quite three o’clock, and I was a bit surprised at how busy the place was. At least twenty people sat around the bar and various tables. This establishment reminded me a lot of the last lycan bar that we visited. The bar was along the back wall, leaving just enough room for a hallway towards the bathrooms. There were woo
den tables and chairs scattered about and several wooden pillars around the room. Like the lycan bar, there were runes and symbols carved into the pillars. If Freddy was here I was sure he’d inform me that they were there to keep things calm and alter the Qi flow in the room. I was happy to skip that long-winded explanation.
“What can we help you with, officer?” The Owl asked.
His voice was deep and a bit echo-y. But when he said “you” there was almost a hoo-ing to it. In very un-me fashion, I skipped the easy joke. Instead, I met his gaze and let him know I wasn’t in the mood for any games.
“I’m just here to ask a few questions. Probably best to stay out of my way.”
The owl cracked his knuckles and somehow managed to smile with a beak. That, in a nutshell, is how my day went. I’d really love to tell you that I found the clue that broke the case, but the truth was that I pretty much wasted the better part of ten hours. Maybe one day I’ll share all the details, but for now, in order to keep from boring you, I’ll summarize the day.
I visited seven bars, bought several drinks, tried a few bribes, started ten different bar fights, and in general provided Vlad with nonstop entertainment as he heckled me between locations. The tips that I followed were useless. Each of the bars requested that I never return. And aside from a few good workouts, I had nothing to show for it. Well, unless you count bloody knuckles and four ruined shirts as something. I pulled back into GHOST HQ just before midnight and Vlad backed into his spot.
“Good work tonight, boss. The team will never doubt your detective skills again,” Vlad said.
“Shut up.”
He laughed as I walked away towards the elevator. The guard on duty chuckled at my shredded shirt and shook his head as I walked by. In my defense, this shirt was actually in the best shape of the ones I had left. I made my way down to Sickbay to check on the ladies. Erika was sleeping peacefully, and Kara was napping on the bed beside her. Our witch was apparently a light sleeper as she woke up when I approached.
“How are my favorite ladies doing?”
“What happened to your shirt?” Kara asked.
G.H.O.S.T. Teams (Book 2) Shifters Page 18
