The thrum thrum thrum of the venerable engines had become a living heartbeat, a continuous vibration he felt through the freighter’s steel decks and bulkheads and, indeed, through every piece of furniture bolted or otherwise affixed to the cabin he called home from the moment they sailed from the port of Genova.
The landmark medieval lighthouse, rebuilt in 1543, had slid by quietly as Franco watched from the ship’s railing, bundled in his new bulky coat which once belonged to an escaping German officer of the Waffen SS.
An officer who had been a werewolf, making good his escape from Europe.
He’d watched the square lighthouse obelisk and felt nothing. His father was dead. His mother was safe, but he could not return home. He should have shed a tear, but he was too hardened now to feel sadness. Soon the tugs had the steamship far out enough on the Mediterranean that the hawsers had been withdrawn, salutes exchanged, and the ship was on its own.
Night had fallen quickly then, and soon the twinkling lights of the northern Italian coast reminded him that the blackout was over. Tonight, as for the last few months, there would be no danger of bombers homing in on factories. Allied planes now landed safely at local airports as occupying forces flew in to bolster the wedge that would soon face the Soviet juggernaut now massing in Eastern Europe.
At least, that was what the newspapers said. Franco barely paid attention, for the sole focus of his self-imposed mission had led him to this ship, to inject himself into a routine transaction that somehow involved diamonds, ocean passage for Nazis, forged papers, and a destination to a far South American shore. The previous recipient of the transaction had begun to decay in a steamer trunk stored in Franco and the priest’s adjoining cabin.
Have to do something about that soon.
Franco was very pragmatic for a compactly-built lad of fifteen, and his eyes had seen more than most people’s, even given the ravages of the last half-dozen years of war, surrender, occupation, and pitched fighting visited upon the Italian populace.
He watched as the inordinately gay lights of other ships began to disappear.
Soon the dark violet-black of the steely ocean water was joined by the slowly dropping line of the darkening horizon and the two became indistinguishable to the untrained eye. At that point only the shrinking lights to his right indicated where land ended and the dark vastness began.
Franco’s knees shook slightly at the thought that below him the unseen chasm was growing in depth with every mile the heavy oil-burning engines put between the ship and the dwindling coastline. He rarely felt fear, but the depths below him were a vast and dark unknown that somehow affected him.
He heard a rustle beside him and his hand brushed the wooden grip of the Beretta M1934 pistol under his coat. But it was only the old Jesuit, Father Tranelli, shivering under his own commandeered foul-weather jacket.
“They’ll serve some kind of dinner for passengers and crew soon,” said the priest softly. “We should eat, pretend we belong.” He was still holding his head where Franco had laid him out with the heavy pistol earlier. There had been a little blood, but Franco had cleaned him up and the bruise was almost invisible on his scalp, half-hidden by his thinning, unruly white hair.
“We had better watch what we say,” Franco said. “We don’t know who else is aboard. What else is aboard.” With Corrado not here, Franco had easily slipped into the role and taken charge of the operation.
Tranelli shuddered visibly, made the sign of the cross, and spit out into the darkness.
Chapter Three
DiSanto
He was driving around aimlessly, a feeling in his belly that he couldn’t define—and that he couldn’t deny, either.
There had been that meeting with Stephen Barton, the Homeland Security guy everybody hated. DiSanto got along well him. He guessed he got along well with just about everyone, which maybe said he was bland. But he just wasn’t an in-your-face kind of guy. Not like Lupo, whose temper had a short fuse.
Of course, now that DiSanto knew Lupo’s secret—had known for a while, actually—he could guess where some of that barely checked anger came from.
And he thought he had problems.
He had learned first-hand that being a werewolf was a messy problem at best, most often canceling out any of the benefits. Lupo told him he’d hated his condition from day one, whereas DiSanto thought he could work with it. Kind of like a super-power, wasn’t it, and the problems be damned.
He made a turn that he would have said was random, but as soon as he made it he knew where he was going.
Damn it.
It was like being a prisoner.
Except he was feeling like a prisoner everywhere. At home, his wife had changed and now looked upon him with suspicion and—was it dislike? Was it really? If it wasn’t for his kids, he’d stop trying to repair the broken limb that had been their marriage.
Then there was work. He was a good cop, maybe even a great homicide detective, and partnering with Lupo had been the best thing ever in his career. They complemented each other’s strengths perfectly. But since the DHS task force had come along to follow up on the bus shooter investigation, which was going on in multiple cities where the shooter had done his deed, ever since then there’d been a wedge placed between him and Nick. Barton had taken him for the task force, while Lupo had wanted out because of his troubles and now he was really on the outside.
Thing was, DiSanto was committed to the shooter investigation. He wanted to catch the lunatic and stop him as much as anyone, but he had begun to suspect something else was going on there. The DHS might have been the sensible agency to deal with this potential terrorist, but more and more it seemed the work of a wandering lone wolf, not a cell, and ever since the first day they’d arrived, Barton’s interest seemed to lie elsewhere. But where?
“Nick Lupo, that’s where.” He pounded the wheel lightly. His temper didn’t usually peak with destruction.
Yeah, Barton seemed to be keeping one eye on his weak-tit task force and the other on none other than Nick Lupo, who seemed oblivious.
And now that Ryeland had just introduced everyone to the new IA head, Lieutenant Roman, DiSanto thought he had some sort of agenda featuring Lupo. But it was separate from whatever Barton was doing, like two different orbits. Ryeland, bless his New Orleans origins and subsequent outsider status, didn’t seem to be aware of it. Or maybe DiSanto had just become a paranoid wacko himself, seeing conspiracies everywhere.
So he felt like a prisoner at work, just unsure as to who would torment him more.
Here, on the street, he knew where his torment came from.
It came from her.
If he hadn’t realized it earlier, he knew now that he was heading for the trendy Third Ward—where he and Lupo often grabbed some lunch or dinner—because she lived there. At least, she lived there when she wasn’t muckraking, stirring up trouble, investigating, instigating, or even anchoring the local evening news, which she still sometimes did as a guest fill-in with unnatural star-power.
Heather Wilson lived part-time in the Third Ward, and he might as well admit that he was going to drive past her building to see if he could catch a sighting.
Or?
“No or,” he muttered. “No goddamned or.”
But he knew better. He knew what his loins said, and his loins were calling him a liar right now. Just the thought of her statuesque Amazonian frame, lean and muscular like a wild animal, and that fine face, with its perpetual pout and sarcastic eyebrow movement…just the thought of how she looked made him hard. In fact, he was so hard that he shifted in his seat right then, wishing he could relieve the pressure.
What am I doing here?
Don’t be a fool, you know what you’re doing here.
He wanted to see her. And more.
Yes, and more.
His wife’s face was prominent in his memory, but as often was the case she had an angry smirk written on her features as she criticized and insulted him for some slight, real
or imagined, some infraction of a rule written only in her mind. Her features had caused him to fall in love with her, but they seemed to twist with hate so much these days that he often thanked his lucky stars for the worst shifts, the double shifts, and the overnight investigations or stake-outs. These days he felt like a prisoner both at home and away, and his wife was his jailer.
And so Heather Wilson’s face and body pushed his wife out of his mind’s eye and he turned down Heather’s street, his groin a painful knot of deliciously dangerous tension.
Yes, she was like Lupo. A werewolf.
It made her all the more exotic.
He was beginning to understand Nick’s problems a little better. There was one guy who’d had more than his share of crap to put up with, and not all of it was his fault, either. But DiSanto could see where his own problems were largely of his own making.
Christ, Nick, how do I get myself out of all these prisons?
Lupo
Lupo said nothing for a long while.
“You are still angry.”
“What do you think?”
Corrado sighed. “I understand, but this is not, eh, a normal thing, right? We have been forced to do things that are not good, when you look at them, but they must be done. We have taken approaches that are not approved by everyone, but they must be done. You can be angry, but this is not all about you, Nick Lupo. This is about elements that can hurt everyone and everything you love, and the whole world.”
“Sounds good, but…”
“Listen, you did not know there were other werewolves at one time. But logic should have told you there could be. After all, you were one. And just because you did not know they existed, let me tell you, they most certainly knew about you.”
“What about my father?” Lupo was impatient with this soft-spoken but very dangerous man.
“Yes, what about him? He was a fireball, an avenger, an executioner. But he loved you very much.”
“Yet he never said anything to me.”
“Yet he did not. He protected you. He had no idea you had been dragged into his world. You see, he had walked away years before.”
“Why?”
Corrado smiled bitterly. “Because of me.”
“What did you do?”
The old man’s voice wavered. “It was a betrayal of sorts, though I did not think so at the time. But it came later. For a long time we hunted Nazis, and then we hunted Communists, too.”
“Communist werewolves? Christ!”
“There were never as many, and they paled in comparison to the numbers that came from Germany and Austria. And the Nazis had their experiments, to make them impervious to silver.”
“And are they?”
Corrado nodded. “Some are very close. Some less so. But there is a strain…you should know, you are one of them.”
“What?” Lupo looked at him sharply. “Me?”
“Yes, but it’s not easy to explain.”
“Try.”
“All right. The Nazi experiments yielded some success. Wolfpaw was born in those early days. Then one day a shaman from these parts showed up in Europe, someone you have heard of…”
“Joseph Badger? Are you kidding?”
“No, it was he. He found a way to bridge the Nazi strain and the one that came from here, and also from the distant past. Through Badger, your friend Sam Waters was involved, and his son. And you know the rest.”
“How did Badger run across the Vatican blades?”
“My friend, that is a story for another day. Joseph was terrified at what he had wrought, you see, but he was also a savior in a way, because he had to bring the strain to you.”
“He had to?”
“In a manner of speaking. I think there was destiny. Remember your grandfather and what happened to him. Your father may have unintentionally obstructed the way things were meant to be, when he killed Giovanni Lupo. I came to respect Giovanni as a brave soldier, but when he was wounded by a German werewolf and became one himself, there were only two ways it could end. Either he could pass it down to his line, or it could be interrupted. Franco killed him and interrupted it. Your father was a forceful man. He was both a loose cannon, yes, but also a brave and fearless fighter. He killed many monsters. You see here some of the fruits of his work, and mine. We were a team.”
Lupo lowered his voice. “Did he ever find out about me?”
“I think he may have suspected. He became withdrawn, did he not?”
Lupo nodded.
“He would have blamed himself. And he would have been conflicted, no? His whole life he killed werewolves—monsters. How could he not kill you, and yet how could he? He had already faced that dilemma.”
“And he had killed his own father…” Lupo shook his head. “I just don’t understand…”
“It was an act of love. He set his father free from the, the being of a monster, do you see what I mean?”
Lupo shrugged. “Dead is free, but only in a way.”
“Indeed.”
“So what else do you have to say?”
“Give me a chance. We wanted to keep you out of it all, but we have learned that the, what do you say, the big picture is beyond even our comprehension.”
“We?”
“Yes. When the time is right, you will see.”
“This all sounds ominous…”
“It should. Wolfpaw was but a spire of the iceberg.”
“Tip?”
Corrado made an annoyed gesture. “Yes, tip. And Wolfclaw was behind them here, entrenched within your military, and the logical outcome was that they would attempt to complete their own agenda.”
“The drone program?”
The elder man nodded. “They jumped the gun.”
Lupo thought of DiSanto and his penchant for using every cliché available to him. “So who dimed them out?”
“Dimed? I don’t know this term.”
“Made a call, threw them under the bus, like that. Someone got them out of the drone house before we got there. Most of them, anyway.”
“Yes, there is another shadow behind the shadows. It is always like this.” He looked at his watch. “So you see, you—no, we both—are part of something much larger than what you have here.” He gestured at the files that surrounded them. “One thing you must remember, they have made layers, like a cake, yes? No matter how you…scrape at one layer, there is always another. But we cannot do this all at once. We will meet later. Your abilities are unique, and now you know much that you did not even recently, so we want to bring you into our group.”
“When?”
“Soon. I will be in touch.”
Lupo wondered why he let the old man leave, why he accepted what he was told. But the files told much of the story, and he knew deep within that what he’d heard was the truth.
Still, trusting the old man after what he had done…that wasn’t very likely. Lupo shook his head. No sir, not trusting at all.
Corrado
He watched Nick Lupo fade wraith-like into one of the dark pockets between storage buildings.
During the war, he would have believed he was watching some sort of German beast, Lupo the man’s muscular frame hiding something fearsome and monstrous that needed to be killed. But then Corrado Garzanti had himself become one of them, and his whole world had changed.
Perspective was a bitch. It really tended to kill simple ideology. For some years his ideology had lain dormant. But then he had reconnected with Franco Lupo despite the bad things between them, and then his affliction had become an asset even though he sometimes thought he should just kill himself and be done with it.
Now he was wired into a whole new mindset, let alone ideology.
He waited a minute before taking the cell out of his pocket and bringing it up to his ear. Love all this tech stuff, he thought. Wish we had had it in the war.
“Did you hear it all?”
There was a voice at the other end. The line had been open. The voice spoke now.
/> “I can fill in the parts you did not catch,” Corrado said, gesturing even though the other could not see him. “Later.”
He listened.
“Yes, I know. We are at a dangerous point. But it’s too late to be…subtle. Is that the word? I cannot pronounce it well. Yes, too late to be subtle.”
He listened again.
“It can be done, of course. Do you think—?”
He nodded as if that gesture could be seen, too.
“I agree.”
He looked at where Lupo had disappeared as if there might be some magic answer.
Lupo
He hadn’t slept most of the night. After working on his neutered guns, he had turned in, trying to avoid the acid taste in his mouth from being so easily checkmated. Now whenever fatigue started to claim him, his brain returned to the storage locker and Corrado.
And what he had learned about his father.
The Nazi werewolf hunter.
As in: My father was a hunter of Nazi werewolves.
He’d learned some of the information from the old letter his mother had given him before her death, the one written by one of his grandmothers, but actually speaking to a man who knew so much about the Lupo family during and after the war—well, that was indeed eye-opening. And it was keeping his eyes open now, damn it. He couldn’t help but think of Corrado as a strange link to his own past. All in all, he was glad he’d been unable to follow his gut and just kill the man. Too much to learn, too many mysteries, too many characters he knew nothing about.
Lupo tossed and turned, his thoughts dark.
Every sound in his apartment, or out in the hall, or in the walls and somehow transmitted to him through his trashed pillow made him itch to bring the H&K submachine gun closer. He had replaced the firing pin after meeting with Corrado. Thing was, if he was still in the crosshairs they could kill him any time—a drone strike on his building would do it. They could spin a web of lies about it afterwards: gas leak, furnace explosion, smoking in bed (even though he didn’t smoke), anything at all. They’d done it before. They had commandeered military drones away from the official pilots based in Nevada and used them for their own purposes on occasion, careful to not overdo their reliance on the lethal hardware. The drone’s command software included targeting based on the fortuitous marriage of spy satellite and face recognition technologies, which allowed almost anyone to be personally targeted.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 3
