And Lupo would most certainly tear him a new one when he found out.
He sat on the edge of the lumpy bed and fought off tears.
Welcome to your new home.
Lupo
He climbed out of his Mustang, rather more tenderly than he liked, and was waiting for Barton when the DHS agent reached the car. It was a dented Buick Century in that champagne shade that made it practically invisible.
Barton was walking with his head down, but when he raised his head and saw Lupo standing there he stopped on the sidewalk. They faced each other silently for a few minutes.
Lupo said nothing. He was still hurting from his cuts, scrapes, and burns, but he felt like he had all day.
“Man, Detective, you look like shit,” Barton said finally.
Lupo still said nothing, but his gaze was direct.
“So I guess you followed me?” Barton said, breaking the eye contact.
Backing down.
“Uh uh,” said Lupo. “Didn’t have to. Put a tracker on your car. You shouldn’t use your unofficial cars more than once.”
Barton squinted at him. “Have lots of experience with that, do you?”
Lupo chuckled. “I might.”
“I heard you had a spot of trouble.” He made a show of examining Lupo’s face. “Apparently.”
“Ah, nothing I couldn’t deal with.” With lots of help. Lupo changed the subject. “I assume you found the bus shooter. And he’s no longer a threat.”
“I hear that might be the case.” Barton looked around nervously.
Lupo made a fake laugh noise. “So your task force is done? Mission accomplished. You’ll be moving on?”
“Maybe. There’s some cleaning up to do, or there will be after we’re officially informed of the outcome.”
“What about my dad’s old friend, Corrado? What about him? Does he get pulled, too?”
“I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Cut the crap, Barton. You know damn well who I mean. You and he have been like vultures hovering over me long enough. And there’s somebody else, I think, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Vultures?” Barton’s eyes were slits. “You don’t know the half of it. If anything we’ve been your guardian angels…”
“So now you suddenly know who he is.”
Barton made a wave-off gesture. “Listen, if you knew the overall picture, if you had any idea of the stakes…”
“Then why keep me in the dark?” Lupo said with a growl that came from more than just him. The Creature was back, awake and alert, and more than able to come out and play. “Why not deal me in, if I’m close enough to the game to get burned?”
“It’s not my call, Lupo. I wish it was. I’m just a soldier.” He edged toward the car.
“So that’s it? You take out the bus guy all Clint Eastwood-like and slink away?”
“Live to fight another day. Isn’t that what you do?” Barton climbed into the Buick, ground the starter, and rolled down the window. “I were you, I’d get the fuck out of this area. You don’t want to be around when the shit blows up.”
“Tell me, what did the bus shooter have to do with me? Come on, Barton, give me something.”
Barton looked through him for a second, as if he were surveying an open field in the distance.
Then he decided. “He wasn’t directly involved in this, but Wolfpaw mercs killed his entire squad over there. He was the only survivor. We know they killed a shitload of natives, but there aren’t so many instances of them murdering our troops. This was a bad one, and he could have helped prosecute, but of course it was…uh…wolves, wolf-related, however you wanna put it. Wouldn’t have been easy. Plus it was too much trauma. The whole fucking thing drove him over the edge. Imagine the PTSD the poor bastard suffered.”
“And you were here because…?”
Barton tapped his hand on the window frame, as if counting out time. “Look, I was supposed to hunt down this stone killer before he shot up another bus or a train or a mall, but face it, what could we do with him in court? He would have raved about werewolves everywhere. Statements would have been taken, reports filed, stories written. Nobody would have wanted him alive. They’d have killed him in custody.”
“Yeah, this was definitely more humane.” Lupo made a face. “A real show of justice.”
“No different from you, Lupo. No different from anything you’ve done. At least I can face it honestly.” He put the car in gear and roared away, leaving Lupo standing on the sidewalk looking at the taillights.
“He’s got a point,” Ghost Sam said from where he was standing a few feet away, on the curb.
“Shut up, Sam.”
He headed for his car.
Barton was right.
But I don’t have to fucking like it.
Epilogue
General Johnston
Alpha Bunker
Somewhere in…
The General didn’t appreciate cooling his heels like this, sitting in a luxuriously-appointed waiting room meant to make him forget it was just that, a waiting room.
He didn’t like the lack of respect. Didn’t they realize that, now Lansing was dead, it was he, General Johnston, who headed the Wolfclaw group? The drone command facility had been moved at the last minute, so when those civilian idiots blew it up, it was already abandoned and the drone-grabbing software was already running on different systems. They were still able to commandeer DoD drone squadrons, but now the operation would be run from Alpha Bunker, a spectacular vertical cylinder dug deep into the ground where even a nuclear weapon detonated on its roof couldn’t make more than a dent—a technology gift from the original Paperclip scientists before they’d been snatched away by the United States. Little had the damned Allies known how many of these supposedly meek scientists were also members of an elite group officially a part of the Werwolf Division, a group tasked with infiltrating American and British walks of life at all levels. It had been a perfect little Trojan Horse, a final gift from the Third Reich. A preparation for the Fourth.
General Johnston muttered and thumped the fine leather armchair under his hands. This was getting ridiculous!
The sideboard held a raft of top-shelf bottles, so he mixed himself a solid gin and tonic and sipped it while he continued to wait.
He was eager to get Wolfclaw completely back on line, but it was the leadership in Alpha Bunker who held the purse-strings. Those investments many decades ago had multiplied exponentially and now the Wall Street barons who were more than what they appeared to be controlled a fortune that could bankrupt all but the largest economies, and the mercenary armies at their beck and call could keep it all together for the final conquest of unimaginable consequences for the human race.
Slaves, that was what they would become, slaves to toil for the glory of their betters. Slaves to feed their betters.
He swirled the alcohol and ice in his glass. Drank it down, then mixed himself a second.
Just like them, keeping him waiting. He muttered a curse. He needed to get back to their new quarters, where the rest of the Wolfclaw survivors waited for the go-ahead.
The door at one end of the long room opened quietly.
“Finally!” Johnston said, unable to help himself. He waited, but no one came out to greet him. He set the drink back on the sideboard and approached the open door.
Ah, this is more like it!
The Great Man himself was behind the vast desk, empty save for a computer monitor and low-rise keyboard.
“Welcome, Herr General, welcome. It is my distinct pleasure to have you here, to see for yourself the progress we have made and that which the newest generation will be handed.” The Great Man smiled. The lycanthropy had indeed lengthened his life to an impossible age—over a hundred ten—yet he looked to be barely seventy. The gene had done well with him, and his offspring.
Where it hadn’t done well was his eyes. The General looked into them now and it was like opening a spyhole into the depths of hell its
elf. When the Great Man opened his thin lips, it was even worse.
Suddenly the General felt his solid footing here slipping. A thin sheen of sweat began to tickle his brow and upper lip.
“It is my pleasure also to inform you of the next phase of our master plan.” The Great Man’s English had improved over the years, and even though it was still accented it was now eminently more understandable than the first time he had heard it. He had been a mere captain, then. Now he sat here, a full general, and instead of feeling a sense of pride he found that his stomach was beginning to flutter.
“Yes, I had hoped we would have some direction to take us forward,” Johnston said tentatively. Despite the setbacks with the drones, Wolfclaw had done well. Hadn’t they?
The Great Man wagged a thin finger. “Hmn, some direction would have been advisable earlier, no?”
“I’m not sure—”
“Some direction would have not resulted in the use of the drones for so unworthy a target. We nurtured the Wolfclaw group for future plans, not for, hmn, playing games.”
The general was sweating profusely now. The Great Man was still smiling, however, so he tried to calm his breathing.
Damn that Lansing, he always was a hot-head. He had leap-frogged Wolfclaw too far, and now he wasn’t around to take the heat. The general stiffened in his seat.
The Great Man continued smiling, and it was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.
“Why do you think the Wolfclaw group was undermined? And who do you think gave the order? Lansing became, hmn, a liability and he forced our hand much sooner than we had planned.” He pushed a button on a keypad.
The door through which the general had come opened again silently and two burly attendants entered. They took up positions on either side of the general.
And a voice came from a hidden speaker: “Jawohl!”
To Johnston: “There are consequences.” To the voice on the speaker: “Take General Johnston into the punishment room. We have already heard the evidence against him. This meeting is a formality. Verdict is guilty.”
It took some seconds for the general to comprehend, and when understanding dawned, his face turned a pasty white.
“No, please! I was against it!” he shouted, wheedling. “It was Lansing, he forced us to follow him. He was crazy! We have been religious about following directives from your…”
The burly guards waited patiently until he rose of his own volition. Though he was reluctant, he had no doubt they would have dragged him. His breath came faster now, and the sheen on his brow returned.
“You are to go with them now,” said the Great Man. “Perhaps you will learn something. You are, hmn, dismissed.”
Johnston walked with them because he did not want their arms on his elbows, in case he decided to try and make a break for it. But surely there would be no need…? Surely, they had served their master well over the years? Surely that should count for something?
He clung to the hope that all could be resolved with a small punishment, perhaps a fine, or at worst a demotion.
But when the guards steered him into the other room, General Johnston’s knees went weak, suddenly turning to rubber. The guards grasped him and held him steady with rock-solid arms. Now he understood why this was the punishment room, and he lost hope. Not only hope. All is lost.
What he saw shook even him: several werewolves were in the act of devouring the bodies of his fellow Wolfclaw members.
And some were still alive.
There on the slick floor dotted with drains was General LaPorte, his belly ripped open and entrails spilling out in grotesque chains. He whimpered as two slavering snouts dug into the cavity, shredding his still-living flesh and bone. And there, in the center was General Pedersen’s head, kicked to the side like an unwanted soccer ball, his headless body nearby. Two wolves were lapping up the blood that had leaked from the stumps at both ends.
Then Johnston struggled against the grip in which he was held, but it was too late.
The last thing General Johnston knew was when a huge wolf landed on his shoulders and squashed his head between its massive jaws. He might have lived past the wolf’s ripping and sawing, but he did not live past the moment his head was ripped off the rest of his torso. The wolf swallowed quickly to drink as much of the other werewolf’s blood as he could, then he turned his attention to the torso’s belly.
The feeding continued as the last of the punishments was meted out.
In the anteroom, the Great Man watched and listened on his personal channel. The sounds of gluttony continued at length.
Occasional punishments were just the ticket to relieve some of the boredom created by the bureaucratic shuffle of the new order’s needs.
He licked his thin lips, then used them to smile.
Lupo
Jessie stepped out of the Mustang and again he marveled at how this earthy, outdoorsy woman who made his life bearable could look so much like a movie star when she chose to.
She was wearing a shimmering low-cut gown of aquamarine and heels a mile high, and she looked like she belonged on a red carpet anywhere in the world. The late winter was being kind, and she didn’t need a coat—though he had one in the car for her—and she turned and smiled at him as he held the door. She wore her makeup expertly, eyelids matching the dress and a classic red on her lips, and he knew without looking that everyone nearby had turned to look at her as she walked into the central precinct on his arm.
She was smiling, happy for once, and he felt the electricity of her touch where their hands joined together.
He knew and she knew how close they had come to losing each other, and she had somehow forgiven him his little faux pas, not having informed her he was heading north. He had lied a little, saying it was a surprise and he was planning to clean up the cabin and take her there, but he knew she probably didn’t believe him.
Nevertheless, they had celebrated their renewed love with a long session of intimate therapy.
And she hadn’t once mentioned becoming a werewolf, relieving him of the pressure.
He remembered to limp a little, but some of this limp wasn’t artificial at all. She walked slowly for him, and he put his hand on her back, wishing he could slide it lower but keeping it classy.
Tonight Ryeland was making good on his threat and presenting Sergeant Danni Colgrave with a commendation and, it was rumored, also a promotion.
As Lupo and Jessie reached the main doors and passed into the high marble foyer of the police headquarters building, Lupo noted that many officers and their families had already gathered. There was DiSanto, but he was alone. There was Barton—they nodded curtly. Ryeland was beaming, stepping from group to group and pressing the flesh for the photographers, with a chagrined Colgrave in tow.
She looked great, too. Not at all like a woman who had just shot a fuckin’ helicopter out of the sky. She wore a long silver dress and her dark hair was piled on her head and she winked at him when they passed. Colgrave and Jessie touched hands—what signal there?
And then Lupo spotted Lieutenant Roman.
Roman was alone, of course, lurking on the edge of the crowd, staring at everyone. At Lupo and Jessie. At Colgrave. At Barton. At DiSanto…
Lupo knew that DiSanto had started doing some careful checking on Roman’s past. Right this moment, Lupo hoped DiSanto hadn’t raised a cloud of mud—and called attention to himself, because Roman was definitely giving him the creeps.
Then he spotted Marla Anders, and she was also smiling at him. Weirdly, he thought he glimpsed Ghost Sam at her side. Considering that he thought Sam’s ghost was only in his mind, this was disconcerting at best.
A whispering voice out of the crowd intruded on Lupo’s ear.
“I know what you are, and what you did, and I’m watching you.”
Lupo whirled, careful not to let Jessie notice his distress, but there was no one there. Or maybe it was Roman, who was just disappearing among the uniforms as they formed into ranks, ready
for the presentation.
Lupo gripped Jessie’s hand harder, and she returned his squeeze. Her face was radiant.
But his thoughts had darkened.
Nothing’s ever over.
Look for these other books by W. D. Gagliani published by Crossroad Press
Savage Nights
Wolf’s Cut
Wolf’s Edge
Wolf’s Trap
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 26
