Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “I’m sure,” said Owen. “No doubt that’s the story you told yourself and the High Queen.” He felt his own temper beginning to slip. “I’ve seen the results of Rebel attacks. I wonder how many kids you’ve killed over…”

  This time she did snarl at him. “I have never killed a kid. Not now, not ever.”

  “I know exactly what you are,” said Owen. He slammed the lid of the laptop shut and glared at her over it. “You’re yet another rich and powerful person who used connections and money to escape punishment for your crimes. Someone like you deserves a Punishment Day video, but you’ll never get it.”

  She jabbed a finger in his chest. “Fine. It’s time for honesty, is it? You want to know what I think of you?”

  “By all means,” said Owen.

  “You’re a thug and a bully with a badge,” said Nadia. “All that bullshit about protecting and serving the community? That’s crap. Your job is to keep people in line for the Elven nobles. That’s all you are, a thug and enforcer, and nothing else. Just another group of thugs, but with shiny badges that make them feel good about themselves. Like kindergartners with gold stars.”

  “Really,” said Owen. “Someone like you would say that. You haven’t had to clean up the messes that people like you make. You haven’t had to notify the families that their loved ones are dead, you haven’t had to stop killers after they’ve wrecked lives. You skate away from the consequences of your crimes, and…”

  Nadia laughed in his face. “That’s pretty rich. You had that video ready to go on your phone, didn’t you? Is that what you do in your spare time, watch videos of women getting flogged on Punishment Day? Bet that’s what you and the other officers do all day, sit around and jerk off while watching those. Or maybe you would have threated Caplan with arrest but changed your mind if she slept with you. Bet that’s what you…”

  Owen felt his temper snap. “I have never cheated on my wife.”

  “Oh, hit a sore point, did I?” said Nadia. They were both shouting now, and part of Owen’s mind noted this would look bad if someone saw, but he was too angry to care. “That’s the real reason you don’t like me. Assholes with badges are used to pushing around anyone they like, but you can’t push me around.”

  “I wonder how many crimes you got away with,” said Owen, “and how the High Queen would react if she knew the truth about…”

  “Gonna look into my mind?” said Nadia. “I know you want to.” She leaned closer, glaring at him. “Go on. Do it. Use the mindtouch spell and break into my mind. Then I’ll know that your precious daughters really do have a thug and a liar and a voyeur for a…”

  That did it, the mention of his daughters. Owen knew it was a bad idea, but his anger had grown past his prudence. He summoned magic, cast the mindtouch spell, and sent his will plunging into Nadia’s thoughts, determined to dig out evidence of her crimes. He caught a glimpse of her emotions – fury mixed with disgust and constant, wearying tension – and some of her memories flickered before his mind.

  And then her will closed around his like an iron vice.

  He had an instant to realize that he had made a serious mistake. Her magic was much, much stronger than his, and her mind was far older. She looked like a pretty woman in her twenties, but her mind was older than should have been possible for a human.

  And the older a human mind became, the harder it was to control.

  Then she sent some of her memories pouring into the link of the mindtouch spell, and Owen experienced them as if they were his own.

  In one, Nadia lay pinned on her stomach, screaming and struggling. A dozen anthrophages swarmed over her, ripping open her clothes. Their fanged mouths plunged down, ripping chunks of meat from her back and buttocks and legs, and she screamed until she died from blood loss.

  In another she stumbled through a darkened concrete tunnel, bleeding from a dozen wounds. A mob of bloodrats poured after her, dozens of them, their crimson fur glistening in the dim light. Her left leg was a column of agony, and she collapsed and tried to push off the floor.

  The tide of bloodrats rushed over her, their chisel-like teeth punching into her flesh as she screamed.

  In another memory, Nadia was trapped in the wreckage of a burning house, her shattered right leg pinned beneath a beam. Flames burned through the house, and wraithwolves prowled outside, waiting for her to come out so they could kill her. But she was trapped, and she tried to free herself until the flames consumed her and she died in torment.

  A dozen deaths ripped through his thoughts, and then a hundred, and more and more until it overwhelmed his mind, and Owen fell into merciful oblivion.

  ###

  I stared at Owen, watching him twitch, my teeth bared in a snarl. My mind held his mindtouch spell in an iron grip, and my will ripped into his thoughts. His magic was stronger than I expected, but mine was stronger still, and I was really pissed off. When he had shown that video to Toni Caplan, it had been like a bomb going off in my head. I hadn’t liked Owen from the beginning, and then he had shown himself to be a bullying thug, just as I had suspected.

  I tore the knowledge of the aurasight spell from his memory. I had done this once before when Nicholas Connor’s girlfriend Hailey Adams had tried to look into my mind. That hadn’t ended well for her, and I had pulled the knowledge of the mindtouch spell from her, which was how I had learned it in the first place. I didn’t need Owen Quell. I would track down Doyle’s killer myself, and then…

  I heard something rasping and realized it was Owen’s shoes scraping against the floormats. He was jerking and twitching like he was having a seizure.

  The anger evaporated, leaving a burst of sick dread in its wake.

  Shit. Had I just murdered a Homeland Security officer?

  What the hell was I doing?

  I released my will, and the mindtouch spell faded, the mental contact evaporating. Owen collapsed into the driver’s seat, his eyes closed. He was still breathing, which was good. I put two fingers on his neck and started counting his pulse.

  Hundred and eighty beats a minute. Not good.

  I waited, and his pulse and breathing slowed. Sweat dripped down his face, but his pulse dropped to a much less alarming rate. I sat back with a relieved sigh. What the hell had I been thinking? The Punishment Day video had pissed me off, but I shouldn’t have picked at Owen.

  But he shouldn’t have implied that I had killed kids. That had really gotten under my skin. That was what had turned me against Nicholas Connor when I had discovered he planned to bomb that soccer stadium in Los Angeles to assassinate Duke Wraithmyr. I mean, I’m not the kind of woman who gets gooey over babies or thinks that kids are cute (I mostly find them annoying), but I don’t want them hurt.

  When Owen implied that, I had lost it. He shouldn’t have said that.

  But maybe I shouldn’t have implied that he used his badge to coerce female suspects.

  Damn it all, I was a hundred and eighty years old. I had to learn to control my temper.

  I waited for Owen to wake up. It took about forty minutes. No doubt Toni and Dave were watching and wondering why the hell we hadn’t left. I waited, and Owen’s eyes blinked open. He saw me watching him and flinched back, one hand going towards his gun, the other coming up in the beginning of a spell.

  “Give it a minute,” I said. “Um. What just happened was that you looked at some of my memories, they were too horrible for your mind to process, so your brain sort of rebooted itself and you blacked out for the last forty-three minutes.” I handed him a bottle of water I had found in the emergency kit under seat. “Drink this, it will make you feel better.”

  He blinked at me but took the water and opened the bottle.

  “If it helps,” I said, “you won’t be able to remember it clearly. The mind sort of deletes the memories for self-protection.”

  Owen took a drink.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have provoked you into using the mindtouch spell. I knew what would happen, and I a
pologize for that.”

  He coughed out a laugh.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, “but I was the damn fool who did it.”

  “And I apologize for saying that you did…the things I said you did,” I said.

  Owen grunted. “I shouldn’t have tried to look in your head. I’m a Homeland Security officer, for God’s sake. I’ve been called every name and heard every threat in the English language.” He shook his head. “And I lose my temper with you of all people.”

  “I’m just really that annoying,” I said.

  He snorted. “Not going to argue with that.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t know what you had in your past, but the High Queen pardoned you. That’s that.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Those memories,” said Owen at last. “Did you project them? Or did they really happen?”

  “They really happened,” I said, staring at the dashboard. “All of them.”

  “Christ,” said Owen. “How is that possible? You couldn’t have lived through all that. You don’t have to tell me what happened, but…”

  “It…was something like a time loop,” I said. “In a pocket domain in the Shadowlands. The same day repeated over and over again. Um…every time I died the whole thing reset.”

  “How many times did you die?” said Owen. “A couple hundred?”

  “Just under fifty-eight thousand times,” I said.

  “Christ,” said Owen again. It was the first time I had seen him shaken. “That’s like…”

  “A hundred and fifty-eight years, yeah,” I said.

  We sat in silence some more.

  “How are you even still sane?” said Owen.

  I let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not. Not really. Uh. I’m functional, which is almost as good as sane.” I drummed my fingers on the armrest. “I had to keep it together. My brother would have died if I hadn’t. And my husband…my husband is really helpful. He deserves better than me, but he still loves me, God knows why.”

  “I feel the same way about my wife,” said Owen.

  “Look,” I said. “I flipped out when you showed Caplan that video because I was afraid of that for a long time. I had nightmares that looked like that. I was a shadow agent for an Elven noble…”

  “Kaethran Morvilind?” said Owen.

  I frowned. “How’d you know that?”

  “I’m a detective,” said Owen. I snorted. “You mentioned the Mage Fall, and you stopped the Sky Hammer. Not much of a logical leap.”

  “Guess not,” I said. “Morvilind had me steal things for him. My brother was sick, frostfever. Morvilind cast one cure spell a year, and in exchange, I stole stuff for him. And he told me if I ever got caught, he would abandon me to Homeland Security or kill me remotely through magic, and my brother would die of his illness.”

  “That’s messed up,” said Owen.

  I felt a weird surge of relief when he said that. I had grown up with that arrangement, so I had been used to it. For someone understand to see how screwed up my childhood had been was always…I don’t know. Validating? Something like that. Anyway, I appreciated it.

  “I did work with the Rebels,” I said, “but I hated it. Morvilind ordered me to do it. A deal he had made to find some stuff he needed for the Mage Fall. The minute I was out from under the deal, I turned on the Rebels.”

  “The video of you shooting the Rebel leader and pushing the Sky Hammer into the Shadowlands,” said Owen.

  “That damn video,” I muttered. “If it helps, the Rebel leader was an enormous asshole. He was the one who wanted to bomb New York. I regret some stuff, but I don’t regret killing him. But…I’ve been running from Homeland Security most of my life, right up until I got that pardon. And all that protect and serve stuff just pisses me off. No one with authority ever protected me, not from anything. I was on my own. Shit.” I sighed and rubbed my face. “I suppose I was taking out my issues with Homeland Security on you.”

  Owen nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d talk to a therapist instead. Hell, I’d even pay for it.”

  “Might be I should take you up on that,” I said, half-seriously. Riordan had made a few tentative suggestions in that direction, but I hadn’t listened. What sort of therapist can deal with someone who has my kind of mental problems?

  “If it helps,” said Owen, “you’re not alone. I think I was doing the exact same thing with you.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I became a Homeland Security officer,” said Owen, “because of my brother Christopher.”

  “This isn’t going to be a happy story, is it?” I said.

  “No,” said Owen. “I grew up in Minneapolis. One day Chris and I were walking home, and he was hit and killed by a man named Peter Walsh. Heard of him?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was a Minnesota state legislator,” said Owen. “He was also seriously drunk at the time. It should have been a straightforward conviction, but Peter Walsh happened to be married to Luke Corbisher’s niece…ah, I see you do recognize that name.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I’d never met Luke Corbisher, but I knew his son Martin much better than I would have wanted. “Go ahead.”

  “Walsh went to trial for it,” said Owen, “and Luke Corbisher arranged for him to get off. My family was furious, but there was nothing they could do about it. But I started playing detective. I found a recording of Walsh drinking about ten minutes before the accident, and another recording of him actually running that stoplight and hitting Chris.” His smile was hard and joyless. “That forced another trial. Corbisher washed his hands of it, and Walsh wound up getting convicted and executed for murder. The Corbisher family had it out for us, so we had to move to Milwaukee.” Owen shrugged. “Ever since that, I was interested in law enforcement work. But then I manifested magic, and I wound up in the Wizard’s Legion.”

  “So that’s why you were so pissed at me,” I said. “You thought I was someone like Peter Walsh.”

  “Seems I was wrong,” said Owen.

  “Well, I can’t blame you for that,” I said. “I am kind of a bitch even on my best days.” I laughed.

  “What?” said Owen.

  “It’s funny,” I said. “Not what happened to you, that’s not funny, but just…the coincidence. I know all about the Corbishers. Did you know that Luke Corbisher was the high priest of a Dark Ones cult?”

  Owen looked taken aback. “What? Seriously?”

  “Honest to God,” I said. “The Corbishers were the head of a Dark Ones cult going back centuries. Luke wanted to keep it quiet. But his son Martin decided it was time to join the Rebels, so he murdered his dad, made it look like an accident, and allied with the Rebels. And then he tried to kill me…jeez, a bunch of times. I forget how many off the top of my head.”

  “What happened to Martin Corbisher?” said Owen. “I’d heard that he disappeared.”

  “I don’t actually know,” I said. “He’s probably dead. I hope he’s dead. If he was in the Shadowlands when the Sky Hammer blew up, it killed him with the rest of the Rebels. If he was in New York when the Sky Hammer went up…I don’t know. He might be hiding someplace. Or he could have gotten killed in the battle. A lot of people got killed in New York, and not all the bodies have been found.”

  “Huh,” said Owen. “Suppose that explains why Luke Corbisher cut off Walsh once I found that new evidence. He probably feared his cult getting exposed. I wonder how long the cult was going on. Do you know how the Corbishers originally made their money?”

  “No,” I said, curious. “I’d heard the family allied with the High Queen during the Conquest. Figured they got rich then.”

  “They were rich before the Conquest,” said Owen. “Dug up some facts when I was playing junior detective. In the last couple of decades before the Conquest, the US government decided to resettle large numbers of African refugees in Minnesota. Luke Corbisher’s ancestor took government contracts to build housing for them. He did it as cheaply as pos
sible and pocketed the difference.”

  “That sounds like good old Marty Corbisher,” I said. “Wonder how many of those refugees ended up as sacrifices to the Dark Ones.”

  “Probably more than we’ll ever know,” said Owen.

  “Well, it’s stopped now,” I said. “All of Corbisher’s followers died in the Sky Hammer, and the Corbisher Group in Minnesota is under new ownership. Wouldn’t surprise me if the High Queen is the new majority shareholder of the company.”

  “That is one of her favorite strategies,” said Owen. “Huh. You were on the bad side of the Corbishers, too. Never would have guessed.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be shocked to learn I have a gift for getting on people’s bad sides,” I said. Owen snorted. “I wound up working for the High Queen when she arranged to have my brother healed. How’d she recruit you?”

  “Same thing, mostly,” said Owen. “My wife was pregnant with twins. After they were born, we found out they had underdeveloped livers. They would live for a couple of days at most. The High Queen found me then. I had left the Wizard’s Legion because I couldn’t hide my talent for mind magic. She offered to have my kids healed in exchange for my service.”

  “So here you are,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Owen. “Seventeen years later.”

  “God,” I said. “I’ve only been doing this since July.”

  “It’s…not as bad as I thought it would be,” said Owen. “I thought she’d have me kill people who crossed her. The High Queen’s a hard woman.” I remembered how Jeremy Shane had called her a cast-iron bitch. “But she’s not corrupt, and she wants justice.”

  “Did she give you that speech about how justice is covered in blood and tears, but so are newborns, and they’re just as important to the future?” I said.

  “Several times,” said Owen, and I laughed. “I get the hard cases. The ones that stump the other investigators, or that are politically sensitive. I can use the mindtouch spell to look into suspects’ thoughts, and if I know they’re guilty, I can gather the evidence I need to build a case against them in court.”