by L. A. Banks
“Don’t leave,” he said, breathing in short bursts between his words. “It’s not what you think.”
Sasha nodded. “It never is,” she muttered, and then simply waited for him to go inside to address his household issues before folding away into the neighborhood fabric and disappearing.
CHAPTER 2
Somewhere along the border of Afghanistan . . .
NOTHING IN ALL his twenty-two years of living had prepared Woods for what he was witnessing. There weren’t enough simulations in the world to emotionally steel him for this. Cold sweat drenched his body despite the insufferable heat as he stood amid the elaborate network of caves with his small strike force squad, clutching the alternate clip in his fist. Fear had a stranglehold on him. Not one of their own. Not Rod. He told himself that it was the constantly blowing sand and grit that made hot moisture form in his eyes.
Temporarily paralyzed like the others, he waited as seconds clicked away, eating up the training that was supposed to prepare him for this moment. All they could do was stare in horror.
Rod had gone into a violent seizure. Phase one. Doc Holland’s voice echoed through his mind as a distant memory. Give the man a shot. He did. It didn’t work. Step back—way back, out of lunge range. He did that. God knew, he did that. Slam in your clip of silver shells if any team member’s eyes changed. They had. Motion should be fluid and precise. Lizard brain. Don’t think about it, just do it. A new clip was supposed to go in. His mind told him to yell to his men to switch to what they only thought was hollow-point ammo. But his clip was still in his hand, frozen. His vocal cords were frozen, too.
Cap’s eyes glowed gold, his pupils pitch-black orbs of never-ending darkness. His normal shock of red hair had lengthened and gone midnight black right before their very eyes and covered his face, his jaw . . . a jaw that became distended and filled with glistening, saliva-slicked fangs. Bones and ligaments ripped and snapped, the sound causing nausea as the leader of their squad cried out in sheer agony. Clothes tore away from his body as he shivered on the ground growing larger, and larger, becoming less human . . . and—
“Hollow-point clips in!”
Survival instinct immediately took over the second whatever was on the ground swung its huge head in his direction and snarled. The clip was in, weapon leveled, a gaping maw opened, and the thing went airborne. He yelled to his men to take cover and squeezed off rounds falling backward; the other men, in a frenzy, fired, began running, chaos. Chunks of flesh and gore fell from the beastly body; warm wetness splattered his face and fatigues. Nausea made his stomach pitch. A huge creature was still coming toward him, and only a split-second roll away kept it off him. When it hit the ground it didn’t move. The bullet-riddled carcass lay limp on the rocky terrain for a second, then was up and gone in a blur.
Jumping up quickly, Woods ran to find cover with the other men. Johnson held out a sat phone to him with a shaking hand. Four other pairs of wide eyes looked at him for direction.
“Oh, shit . . .” Johnson finally whispered. His huge dark frame was covered in sweat and he just kept shaking his head, backing farther and farther away from the group.
“Mother of God,” Gonzalez croaked, crossing himself. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
“I’m out. Fuck all this, man,” Sherwin said, hoisting up his weapon. His blue eyes darted between where the carcass had been on the ground and the lieutenant. “Shoot me in the head now, if you gotta. I didn’t sign up for this shit, Woods. Uh-uh. They never told us this was possible!” His voice broke and he raked his brunet hair with stiff fingers. “Did you know? Huh! Did you fucking know! I didn’t sign up for this!”
Sherwin, Gonzalez, and Johnson were the select human soldiers who served as backup for them, depending on the nature of the mission. They knew about the pack and their infection, but what had just happened was a whole other ball game.
“If something like this showed up on your mother and sister’s back porch, would you give a shit then, Sherwin?” Lieutenant Woods said between his teeth. “Pull yourself together! This is a domestic threat.” He looked around at the men on his squad. “Be clear. I will shoot all deserters point-blank range. And what we just saw here is exactly why you’re part of Delta One.”
Hard gazes looked away from Woods and sought the horizon. Fisher turned away and puked, his lanky body shaking uncontrollably. Sweat had turned his blond hair dark. Blood splatter and hunks of animal meat dropped from his face and uniform.
Sherwin and the others lowered their weapons toward Fisher and Lieutenant Woods, unsure. Both were covered in what had been Rod Butler’s blood. Both obviously carried possible contagion, in their minds.
“Everybody stay calm. I’m calling for an extraction. They gave me a code. Just like they gave us the special bullets to take one of these things down. You can’t catch the virus like that—you have to be bitten.”
“It wasn’t a thing a few minutes ago,” Johnson argued. “It was Rod, man. Captain Butler. How’d this happen, man? What, are there more of them in the caves? They think some of it got loose in the States? What the hell!”
Sherwin nodded, backing away with Johnson. “Yeah. Had us searching through this endless cave network with him. Anything could have happened in the caves. Something ain’t right. Why’d they send us with Butler, if they knew this was possible?”
“Because he was the best man for the job,” Woods argued, holding firm on his orders to keep as much of Operation Dog Star under wraps as possible. “He had a sixth sense about—”
“First off, that wasn’t no fucking man, hombre,” Gonzalez argued and then spat on the ground. “Second off, is that the bullshit they told you to get you to go along with this loco shit? You got that in you, is that why you’re so cool?”
The threat of mutiny left a thick residue of distrust in the air. It was not above his own men to frag him on the spot, fear was running that rampant.
“I don’t have anything in me but red, American blood. What we just saw was on a need-to-know basis, and I followed my orders. We’re looking for underground virus labs that could breed something like this. Period. We didn’t find any before we had an incident . . . Butler might have gotten infected on a previous mission. The way he was wounded he probably won’t last much longer. God rest his soul in peace.” The lieutenant punched in the number, his hands still shaking from adrenaline and heartbreak. The moment the call connected, he spoke rapidly into the mobile unit. “This is Delta One. We need a Black Hawk now. Pull us out! Man down; transformation in full phase.”
“Roger that, Delta One. Give us your coordinates.”
Quickly rattling off their location, the lieutenant kept his eyes on his squad. They were all jumpy enough to frag each other if anyone blinked wrong. His listened carefully to the directions that gave him a pickup point and then disconnected the call.
“We just have to make it over that ridge,” he said, beginning to jog toward salvation.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Sherwin said in an awed tone, causing the others to turn and stare at the dark cave openings that surrounded them. “What if he’s not dead? What if he comes back . . . He could be anywhere hiding and waiting for us.”
“Let’s get out of here!” Woods shouted as the familiar thud of chopper blades beat the air in the distance. Leading the charge, he hustled a dazed Fisher along with him and began waving wildly for the Black Hawk to put down.
But as they crested the ridge he noticed that something was wrong. The pilot conferred with the copilot, and in that instant, Woods looked at his bloodied condition and then glanced quickly at Fisher’s. An uneasy feeling made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck and he slowed his gait. The Black Hawk wasn’t lowering for a pickup now; it was angling at a rocket-launch pitch to purge possible contagion. Seconds elongated into eternity as he yanked the closest man to him into a cave while screaming for the others to take cover. Blood-slicked fatigues were in his fist as he and Fisher began falling. From his peripheral vision
he saw Gonzalez turn with Johnson. Sherwin had disappeared over the ridge, running toward what he thought was safety.
Then came the impact, searing heat, and blinding light. Everything went dark.
SATCOM . . . location undisclosed
“SHE’S GETTING WORSE,” the general said quietly, looking up at Dr. Holland. Concern creased his weathered brow more than age did.
The doctor paced around the long mahogany briefing table in the war room with his hands clenched behind his back. Each lanky step forward was punctuated by worry. Sasha was more than an experiment; she was like a daughter to him. “I know,” he finally said, hating to concede it. “We should never have sent her out on a mission under the full moon—”
“That’s the damned point!” the general snapped, running his thick fingers through his silver-gray hair. “We have to know that they won’t break under pressure, will follow orders to the letter, that their medication works and will hold the beast within them at bay—otherwise, what damned good are they? This whole paranormal infestation of the planet is out of control.”
“Sir, there is no actual control, only containment of certain species—”
“Don’t tell me that crap after we’ve invested over a billion dollars in life sciences to make the Young Wolves even possible. Goddamned arrogant vampires cannot be trusted and are a walking hazmat, just like demons, and ghosts, and whatever else is slithering around out there. I swear to you, it feels like we’ve all landed on an alien planet. Who knew?”
Xavier Holland contained a sardonic smile. “Ancient cultures knew about them and drew them on the walls of caves, told of them in legends, and painted them on scrolls. We’re just now coming to terms with what’s been around all along. Thirty years of knowing, through new technologies never before available, is a drop in the bucket of time compared to mankind’s stories over millennia. Our nuclear blasts opened the gateways even more between worlds, just like all of our electromagnetic interference did. We trespassed on the supernatural turf with our technology, now they’re in our world in larger numbers than ever before. In the past only a few at a time ever slipped through the—”
The general held up his hand. “Spare me the history lesson. What’s done is done. My main concern is that the general public never knows what’s actually out there and that our wolves are controllable. Stable. They have got to help contain what keeps breaching our dimension borders and wriggling out from the other side. Imagine if the general public knew—do you have any idea the level of chaos and panic that would cause . . . not to mention what could happen on the black market? What do you think would have happened if the general public truly understood what was behind the Colombian Disaster?”
“I’m well aware—”
“Are you?” The general looked at Xavier Holland hard, cutting him off again. “If thugs and terrorists were to become able to call up these preternatural species, kiss our civilization as we know it goodbye.” He let out a long, weary breath. “That’s why you’ve been given an almost inexhaustible budget to study the phenomena, develop a containment strategy, and monitor anywhere they might be breeding.”
While it was impossible to argue the general’s point about the potential dangers, they were at polar opposites when it came to methods of handling the situation. Rather than add gasoline to the already roiling flame between them, the doctor opted to remain silent for the sake of diplomacy. He had a full team to consider. More importantly, Sasha and Rod were the eldest and at risk. Darien Woods and Jim Fisher had a few years, but he didn’t trust the general not to take matters into his own hands.
Xavier Holland carefully studied the general’s body language during the brief standoff. Something was very wrong. The team’s psychic monitors and tech support shaman had whispered that truth in his ear. Winters had thrown the bones. Clarissa had cut the cards. None of the other geneticists or dimensional code breakers trusted the brass. The general was delusional—life as they knew it had already changed. There would be no going back to the old way ever again. Control was impossible; coexistence was the only chance of survival. The older, indigenous cultures knew how to combat the scourges of the supernatural realms and live with the more harmonious elements within it. Supernatural species couldn’t be weaponized to fight human battles; the concept was insane! But the doctor kept his expression serene as he listened to the general take a deep breath and then resume his hawkish diatribe.
From the very beginning, he’d tried to warn them. Injured soldiers that had been medivaced out of the hot zone were viewed as living repositories of scientific breakthrough. It was fast and sloppy work—as soon as the human body died, so did the active werewolf virus within it. The core medical team thought those shredded men were turning into werewolves, and they were. Despite the chaos, scientists on the Sirius Project were ecstatic. The answer to their scientific questions had practically fallen into their laps. The perfect sample to bond with human DNA was right before their very eyes.
However, what the general could never seem to grasp was that the werewolf virus proved tricky.
Xavier Holland swallowed down the acid burning his esophagus. As the general railed on, Holland reflected that the instability of the virus was the very foundation concept that a man of war and a man of science would probably never see eye to eye on. Defeat and fury raced through Holland’s body, elevating his blood pressure. It had been impossible to get the chain of command to understand that, once the werewolf virus was introduced to a human, it mutated, literally ate its way up the DNA chain until the human went mad and Turned. In the end, they’d lost all of the soldiers to a Turn.
Unfortunately, rather than taking it as the warning it was—to leave that species alone—project scientists guided by military pressure weren’t allowed to give up. In fact the brass believed that they had a breakthrough on the medication that would suppress the Turn and that would be enough. It wasn’t.
The more Xavier Holland remembered, the farther and farther away the general’s voice became. Panic at the top echelons had forced a genetics engineering race that expanded the search for others who had been bitten or scratched by a werewolf. Soon, hospital and police records were discreetly searched for wolflike attacks. Black Ops was out of control, with no checks and balances. A new paranormal unit was formed under the secrecy of the Patriot Act in the name of Homeland Security. Anyone who questioned authority was considered a traitor, so compliant silence became the watchword.
Feeling mired in politics, some members of the team thought looking for domestic victims was a futile search, because if others had been bitten then there would have been reports of humans turning into ravenous beasts. And then there were those who thought that the paranormals were very good at cleaning up after themselves, and had probably done much to keep their existence a secret over the many thousands of years. The researchers just needed to know what to look for. And slowly they began to find what they had been seeking: subjects who had been bitten and infected with the werewolf virus. That had been the beginning of the end. The vampires had stepped forward and given them tips on how to find the few living subjects they’d needed . . . all for a price, of course. What was bartered away in the unholy alliance, even he didn’t fully know.
Xavier Holland smoothed his palm over his thinning hair, ignoring the general’s droning voice. It was always the same litany, anyway. No one had been thinking about the future ethical or legal potential for disaster then. The legal ramifications alone were beyond comprehension. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the spiral of ethical or moral considerations. No one was rational when it came to this supernatural dilemma, and it couldn’t be openly debated on the world forum. Secrecy was a dark cloak of insanity over the entire project. Madmen.
Infected subjects had been brought in and studied like lab rats. Eventually, the medication developed by the Sirius Project scientists appeared to keep the virus from flaring in the test subjects’ systems without suppressing their superior strength, agility, speed, and sense of
smell. It was a triumph. Or so it seemed. But he knew better then, just as he knew better now. That triumph had become a time bomb, one set to detonate at a werewolf’s first alpha spike—at twenty-five human years.
The entire human world had lost its collective mind. The United States’ allies asked that the U.S. team share its findings; rumors always crawled out on the battlefield. Death and combat had a way of erasing lines of national demarcation in foxholes and while under attack. Other nations knew the U.S. had taken home some of their badly injured men alive. Claiming sovereignty over their findings and razing all dead human bodies, the U.S. refused, stating that it would not be in their best interests to give any nation what amounted to the schematics to one of their most dangerous weapons in this new fight. The rest of the world was on its own. Politics became so strained that alliances were near total disintegration.
In the meantime, the Americans who survived the testing and responded to the meds jumped at the chance to join the newly created Paranormal Containment Unit. It was a chance to put what most of them viewed as their curse to good use. Those who didn’t respond to the meds were put down. All those over twenty-five immediately Turned within the next full moon phase and had to be put down. It was a fate that hung over all of their heads. Although the squad members were never told about the twenty-five-year time bomb they carried within them.
They’d been infected and were now on meds—that was as much of the story as the PCU squads were allowed to have, and why those soldiers stuck together. Keep it simple. What the young ones never knew was, not one man or woman had survived that Colombian Disaster. There were newer meds now, the experiments refined, but what had entered those badly mauled soldiers’ systems a little over three decades ago, there was no cure for. The new squads were told that they were found from survivors of civilian attacks. It was the only part of the truth that team psychiatrists and behavioral scientists had introduced to ensure cohesiveness and what made the squads a family—because who else could understand them, but each other?
