In the Werewolf's Den

by Rob Preece

  "You don't understand, Dr. Harriman, I'm part of the package. The government wants what you're working on and I'm here to make sure you keep your nose to the grindstone.” And to make sure he really was doing what he'd promised. How many impaired had promised wonderful things, only to disappear once they'd gotten what they wanted from normal human society?

  "You're going to be with me for months?"

  Months? Living in the zone? Danielle took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. Maybe it would be faster than months. For sure, she would hold Harriman's feet to the fire and make him work his tail off.

  "However long it takes."

  * * * *

  Danielle wished she knew more about the technical equipment Carl used in his work. If she could believe Carl, the government had provided him with outdated and inefficient equipment. She suspected that he was telling the truth. The return of magic plague had made everyone tighten their belts and nobody was about to give the best equipment to an impaired, even if he did promise to work miracles.

  "But they're not giving me anything,” Carl argued when she explained that to him. “They've charged my account for the most current equipment and given me this dreck."

  "At least you're out of prison."

  He didn't seem grateful. “It'll take me twice as long to get the job done if I have to work with this stuff. And I'll need twice the staff."

  She hadn't thought about staff. Somehow she'd had the idea of Carl working alone in his lab with her, weapons in hand, making sure that he didn't try anything. Reality was getting in the way again.

  One thing for sure, she wanted him to get the job done quickly. “Get me a list of what you need; I'll see what I can do."

  That seemed to cheer him up some. “Right."

  While Carl calibrated his equipment, checked out his supplies, and did whatever scientific things people like him did, Danielle checked out the rest of the facility.

  She suspected that Joe must have helped specify the requirements, because there were two rooms for bedrooms, one for a gym, and another for a kitchen. She'd be able to maintain her training and not fall too much behind her peers when she finally had a chance to make Vampire Hunter.

  Since Carl looked like he would be messing with refrigeration units, DNA sequencers, and fermenting vats for hours, Danielle switched from the stiff and ugly brown uniform of a warder-herder to a pair of running shorts and sports bra to get some exercise in.

  "I'll be in the gym,” she told him. “Don't leave here without letting me know."

  "Fine,” he told her. “Want to go for a run afterwards?"

  "In the zone?” Any time she'd been in the zone before, she'd been in a vehicle with her weapons ready.

  "Can we run in the normal side of the city?"

  She shook her head. “Only if I put you on a leash."

  He gave her a half-smile as if he thought she was joking. But she wasn't. Before his transformation, Carl had obviously kept his eyes firmly closed. Which meant she was stuck explaining reality to him.

  His smile faded slowly as the truth sunk in.

  "The zone it is, then."

  She hit the weight machines in the gym, pushing herself to failure on every set. Some of her fellow-students had been lackadaisical about their strength and unarmed combat training exercises, but every time she thought about slacking, memories of the vampire stooped over her mother surged.

  Carl puttered around outside and she used his presence to motivate herself further. She couldn't stay awake all the time. Yet Carl needed to be certain she could handle anything he could throw at her.

  She'd finished her three sets for each muscle group and was running through a Kata, one of her martial arts routines, when Carl appeared, dressed in a pair of shorts, an M.I.T. T-shirt, and running shoes.

  He grinned, cocky and full of confidence. “Ready for that run?"

  "Think you can keep up?"

  He laughed. “Trust me, I can keep up with anything you throw my way. Anything."

  Chapter 2

  Danielle eased into a lope as they strode away from Carl's new home and onto the street. During the past few weeks of final exams, detailed briefings on the situation in Dallas, and endless bureaucratic paperwork as the courts transferred Carl into her herding, she hadn't had a decent workout. Her body ached from the lack.

  She snuck a glance at Carl to see how he was holding up.

  Looking was a mistake. He seemed to be holding up fine. Lean muscled legs that had been discreetly hidden beneath prison coveralls were now on full display. His running shorts showed off tight-muscled buns. If he hadn't been impaired, he would have been sexy as anything. Fortunately, her stepfather had cured her of that kind of attraction forever.

  She upped the pace and tried to keep her attention on the dangers of the Dallas Zone. Here there be monsters, she reminded herself. More quotes from the Academy.

  The zone was deceptively quiet. Male and female impaired wandered the streets, apparently going about their business. Few gave Danielle and Carl a second glance, as if a jogging Were and his keeper were part of their daily life.

  The impaired might be dealing in illicit drugs, hiring out murders, plotting the overthrow of the human government, and exchange of forbidden books, but to Danielle, things looked deceptively normal. As if these were ordinary humans. A child almost ran into her, then flitted up on wings that beat as fast as a hummingbird's, and it hit Danielle with a flash that she was alone in a zone, unmonitored, beyond the range of backup. She became hyper-aware of the relative silence, the occasional wings, tails, and pointy ears she caught glimpses of, the small shops dealing in who knew what contraband. Suddenly the run took on a more ominous air.

  "Are you warmed up yet?” Carl asked, breaking into her thoughts. “We can pick up the pace if you're ready."

  His tone was smug, superior. So he was in decent shape. Well, he hadn't just spent four years in one of the most grueling training regimes humankind had invented. Time to let him see that he couldn't compete with her, that she would be the dominant one in their, hopefully brief, relationship. Time to rub his canine nose in it.

  "Fine,” she told him. “Let me know if I'm going too fast."

  Her instructors at the Academy had drilled it into her head that the impaired would always test her, always press her limits. She needed to keep a reserve hidden for his inevitable challenge. In a moment of frank honesty, though, Danielle realized that her sudden surge of competitiveness had nothing to do with Were and herder. It had everything to do with wiping the smirk off Carl's smug face.

  She lengthened her stride, settling into a brisk five-and-a-half-minute mile.

  Carl adjusted, looking at her with what appeared to be renewed respect.

  Danielle savored the slap of the concrete under her feet, the moist Dallas air in her short hair, and the flow of blood through her muscles. She let a mile slip past, then another, finally turning toward Carl with a smile on her lips. “Ready to really crank it up?"

  She expected to see him blowing at least a little. After all, he had been locked in prison for six months. While he could have managed isometrics, she didn't think he'd been running any marathons inside the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.

  To her surprise, Carl nodded. “Let's do it."

  She upped the pace to an all-out, sub-five-minute mile. Until now, she had been drawing on her body's natural abilities. To run at the faster pace and to sustain it over any distance, she needed to tune into her warder training, consciously flushing out the buildup of lactic acids from her muscles and filtering oxygen directly from the air to increase her lungs’ capability.

  Carl settled beside her, lengthening his stride and taking advantage of his longer legs. After a mile, though, he was gasping. After two miles, he started to lag.

  "What's the matter?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to keep up with no trouble."

  He nodded grimly. Whatever else she might say about him, Carl Harriman was no quitter. He leaned forw
ard, lowering his center of gravity, until it seemed that his arms were almost on the ground helping him move.

  His breathing steadied and the pink tip of a tongue protruded from his mouth.

  She wanted to laugh. In college, she'd run marathons, taking joy in challenging her body to the ultimate. When she'd been inducted into the Academy, though, the training was too serious to allow simple enjoyment to enter into it. For the first time in years, Danielle simply savored the moment.

  Carl's breathing shortened suddenly and she glanced over to see whether he was finally ready to concede the game.

  Her blood froze.

  Carl was in mid-transformation. As she watched, his arms lengthened into forelegs, his face narrowed into that of a wolf. A black wolf with shots of silver running through his fur.

  Those same tawny eyes stared at her, filled with an intelligence that was more than animal, but also a cool calculation she recognized as wholly Carl.

  Academy conditioned reflexes took over. She threw herself over the panting animal while simultaneously withdrawing the silver mesh leash she stored coiled within her wristwatch.

  Too slow, she realized as the werewolf reacted; his sharp teeth closed around her throat. She'd let herself get distracted and now she would pay the price.

  She blurred into high speed, twisting away from the werewolf at the same time as she wrapped the silver coils around his neck. She yanked firmly, choking off his windpipe, then rolled over on top of him to make sure that he couldn't use his superior weight against her.

  He shifted, catching the leash with his shoulders rather than his throat and carotid artery.

  She'd let her competitiveness and that trace of forbidden sexual attraction gain control and make her forget that Carl was impaired, the enemy.

  She yanked the leash harder, even though she knew it was futile as the wolf's sharp teeth tightened around her throat.

  Her heart sounded loud enough to shake the street as she jerked the leash even tighter. She should be dead, she realized. Although she moved faster than any unmodified human could even think, she hadn't moved fast enough to escape a magically infected Were's razor-sharp teeth. So why wasn't she?

  The Were struggled briefly beneath her, its tawny eyes glaring at her, then it subsided. Not, she realized, because it was defeated. Simply because it knew that further resistance was futile.

  So why, she wondered, had Carl shifted at all? If he wanted to attack her, nighttime, while she was sleeping, would offer the best chance. And if he was going to shift in broad daylight, why hadn't he killed her when he had the chance?

  "Damned impaired animals,” she muttered as she yanked even harder on the silver cord around the Were's neck. It wasn't attacking her, but it also wasn't exhibiting the signs of wolf submission.

  She felt the Were shift beneath her and brought her hand up to crush its throat. Carl caught her hand, then grinned. And he was in human form again.

  She sat astride him, suddenly and acutely aware that Carl was all male beneath the scientist exterior that he so poorly wore. His arousal pressing against her groin generated an all-too human, if inexplicable, reaction from her hormones.

  "That's a little tight,” Carl remarked, his voice only slightly hoarse despite the thin silver cord that bit into his windpipe.

  "Of all the—” she cut off her reaction. He wasn't talking about her own groin, slick now with her instinctive reaction to a male's excitement. He was talking about the leash she'd wrapped around his neck.

  "You shifted on me."

  "An accident. I couldn't keep up,” Carl admitted. “I was really straining. Then it just happened."

  A part of her wanted to finish the job. Nobody would ask any questions when she'd told them that he'd shifted. She would get at least an acceptable rating on this job and be that much closer to her real career.

  But Carl's job was important. Besides, she couldn't prove that he was lying. She had joined the Warders to protect people, not to become an indiscriminate killer—even of the impaired.

  She loosened the leash slightly. “No impaired can keep up with a warder.” Warder school was hard. Only ten percent of the entering class graduated. Another ten percent died in process. The physical exercises and guided biofeedback were bad enough. Building the instinctual reactions to magic that could allow a warder to react more quickly than the magic-infected could think were worse. Yet, without those instincts, a warder could easily fall victim to her charge.

  "You were going to attack me,” she told him. “Don't try to explain this away."

  "Attack you?” Carl's lips turned up into a sardonic smile. “I was minding my own business when you jumped me. I pulled back. Surely you felt the wolf's teeth on your neck. You know I could have ripped your throat out."

  "Ha."

  He looked as puzzled as Danielle felt. “Didn't realize I could control myself in wolf mode. I've always heard that human thoughts and motivations are subverted when the magical infection takes over.” He scratched his head. “I wonder why I didn't kill you."

  She'd caught him in mid-transition. Academy doctrine holds that the beast-form takes over the moment transformation begins, but Danielle was experienced enough to know that doctrine can be wrong. The return of magic was only a decade old and it had affected scientists and artists more than the rest of the population, so there were still a lot people didn't know about the impaired. Especially about relatively low-risk impaired like Were.

  "What did it feel like?” she asked.

  "I hardly noticed. I was running as hard as I could, digging deep to keep up with you. You're one fast lady."

  "Academy training."

  "Well, anyway, it felt like I got a second wind. A new sense of power flowing through my muscles: a heightened awareness of the scents of the zone. But I was still myself. I knew what was going on."

  "A human wouldn't go after me with his teeth."

  Carl looked puzzled. “I guess that's so. I must have had some wolf instincts inside of me. But I was in control. I caught myself and made myself stop when those wolf-instincts were telling me to finish you."

  "Human control is not possible in Were form.” That wasn't just doctrine. It was a fundamental principle that underlay the need to create the zones, to separate the impaired from the normal whom they threatened.

  Carl shook his head. “Maybe I wasn't completely shifted then. But I was still me. And I was still in control."

  She realized she still held the silver cord tight around his neck, still held him in the mount position. And that he was still aroused.

  She wasn't going to kill him, then, so she sprang to her feet, the silver bond tight in her hand.

  "Want to loosen that around my neck?” he asked, choking.

  She gave it a twitch and the pressure eased. Then she stared into his eyes for a moment, looking for any sign of the wolf, before finally removing it entirely.

  Scorch marks burned deep into the tender flesh of his neck.

  "Wasn't that painful?"

  He worked his shoulders. “Oh, yeah."

  "So why you aren't you rolling on the ground howling?"

  He considered. “Wouldn't have done any good, I guess."

  But it was strange. Everyone knew that impaired individuals lost their ability to defer gratification. Just like everyone knew that the human side lost control. Why was Carl different? She pushed the matter from her mind. Maybe it was because he was late onset. Maybe he was just an anomaly. But if he could complete his cure, none of this would matter.

  "Want to continue our run, or head back?” Carl asked.

  "After that? We're heading back.” Danielle turned and began retracing the steps toward her new home.

  * * * *

  After a few days, they settled into a routine. They would run together in the morning—at a cautious pace. Then Carl would retreat to his lab while Danielle arranged for any supplies he required, ran through her martial arts drills, and studied for the post-graduate course in advanced vampi
re slaying.

  To her surprise, Carl volunteered to cook dinner every night, although it was catch-as-catch-can for breakfast and lunch. She'd expected his meals to taste like a laboratory accident, but he managed to deliver a treat every time. Of course, after half a lifetime of institutional food, anything would taste good to Danielle.

  A week into their routine, he suggested that they go out for dinner.

  Danielle remembered the way Carl had been rejected when they'd last entered a restaurant and tried to dissuade him.

  "In the zone,” he explained. “We live here, remember. We might as well explore it."

  "It's a zone. What's to see?"

  Carl shrugged. “Every culture has certain needs and develops methods of meeting them. At least that's the way it works for ordinary humans. I'm betting it works the same way for the magically infected."

  "I thought you were a biologist, not an anthropologist."

  "A scientist is a scientist. We can't help our curiosity."

  "All right. So where do you want to go?"

  He named a restaurant she'd never heard of on a street that didn't show on the map her photographic memory supplied.

  "Sounds like fun,” she said. “Uh, how did you happen to know about it?"

  She intended it to sound conversational. From the hard look Carl shot her way, she knew she'd failed.

  "As in, I thought you were a late onset who's never lived here before, and now you know things about the zone?"

  "I didn't say that. I was just—” well, she couldn't tell him he was spot-on right. “—curious,” she concluded.

  "I've kept my eyes open on our runs,” he told her. “And I did research on the Internet. Despite the restrictions, there seems to be plenty of zone-related information out there. It even looks like there's a crossover crowd at this place. You might not be the only normal there."

  She wasn't surprised to hear about normals slumming. Zone drugs, exotic sex with impaired persons, and a sort of no-rules attitude guaranteed that the dregs of normal society would seek pleasure in the zone. It wasn't legal, but it wasn't anything the Warders cared too much about. As long as no normals got hurt, anyway. On the other hand, impaired information on the Internet was a problem. Cyber-warders were supposed to keep magic-related information off the web, protecting normal children from zone exposure.