Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “Home,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Riordan, pulling off his sunglasses. His eyes seemed darker than usual.

  “We’re finally not in public,” I said, my heart speeding up.

  “No,” said Riordan. “We are not.”

  He leaned over and kissed me, gently at first, and then harder. I wrapped my arms around him, and he pulled me closer, over the parking brake, so that I was half in his lap and half in the driver’s seat. His arms coiled around me, and we kissed for a while, and then one hand started going up the back of my blouse and the other up my skirt.

  “Um,” I said when we broke apart for breath. My brain was not working at all. “We should go inside. Inside. Bed there.”

  Eloquent, I know.

  While I had been talking, he had been undoing the buttons of my blouse, and then he tugged it open and pushed it down my arms in a single movement, the garment falling on the floor. “Why wait?”

  “That so?” I said. I suddenly felt very impatient. “You’re wearing too many clothes. Better rectify that.”

  I ended up completely undressed, and we only got Riordan halfway out his clothes, but that was enough. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have been skeptical about using the passenger seat of a car for a reunion with Riordan, but it turns out I was flexible enough to manage it, and I was short enough that my head wasn’t bouncing off the roof of the car once we really got going.

  It worked exceptionally well. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

  After, I slumped in Riordan’s lap, facing him, my head resting on his shoulder as I caught my breath.

  “God,” I croaked. “I really missed you.”

  Riordan grunted out a laugh. “Noticed.”

  I straightened up, my arms braced on either side of him. “How am I both cold and sweating at the same time?”

  “Because you’re wearing nothing but a pair of boots in a car in November?” said Riordan.

  “Huh,” I said. Due to lack of space, I hadn’t managed to get the boots off. “Look, we totally fogged up the windows. Just as well we’re inside the garage. Else we’d have a Homeland Security officer knocking on the window. Um. Do you see where my skirt went?”

  “I think it sort of got wrapped around your left ankle,” said Riordan.

  “Hell with it,” I said. I wasn’t getting dressed again in the car. I opened the door and climbed out, my clothes gathered in a bundle, and the chill air hit my body like a slap. We had been in the car an impressive amount of time. Riordan climbed out after me, pulling his suit trousers back into place.

  “Go inside before you freeze to death,” said Riordan. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Good idea,” I said, surprised at how quickly the warmth had drained out of me. I let myself into the kitchen and sighed in relief as I stepped into the heat. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was in various states of assembly and unpacking, with boxes on both the island and most of the counters, but the security panel next to the door gave off a steady glow. I reset the alarm system and hurried upstairs to our bedroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bedroom mirror, naked but for my boots and disheveled makeup, and grinned at myself.

  Yeah. Riordan had been glad to see me, too.

  I got dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and went back downstairs to the kitchen. Riordan had opened the fridge and was making himself a smoothie.

  “Travel food,” said Riordan. “Haven’t had a decent meal in days. And the Brits like to either deep fry everything or boil it.”

  “I haven’t eaten, either,” I said, and I grinned. “You’ll want to get your strength up for round two.”

  “Round two?” said Riordan, smiling back. “You…”

  Two things happened at once.

  I heard a buzzing noise, like a phone notification, but louder. Riordan had brought in his own suitcases, but he had also left my laptop bag on the counter, and my aetherometer was buzzing. It had picked something up.

  Second, the alarm panel by the garage door had started chiming and flashing.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “The motion detector in the back yard,” said Riordan.

  When I said that I hadn’t cheaped out on the security system, I hadn’t been lying. I crossed to the panel and tapped in some commands, activating one of the night vision cameras installed outside. Most security systems trigger floodlights when something trips the motion detectors. Mine activates night vision cameras, so the intruders don’t realize that they’re being watched.

  “Shit,” I said. “Riordan.”

  He was at my side, and he let out a quiet curse.

  A two-legged wraithwolf prowled through our backyard.

  Our house has a big lot, and the backyard was about an acre. Behind that was a large patch of forest that had never been developed. I recalled vaguely that Brookfield had once extended in that direction, but it had been destroyed during an Archon attack some decades ago, and the forest had grown back up.

  The two-legged wraithwolf was about halfway between the trees and the house. I tapped another command into the security panel, and the camera zoomed in. The pizza guy’s cameras had been good, but mine were better. I got a good, clear look at the creature, albeit entirely in shades of night-vision green. The thing was about seven feet tall, and it walked on its hind legs with ease. It had hands and feet, though it looked like the hands could double as feet and vice versa and the thing could probably run on all fours without any trouble, kind of like a gorilla. The body was vaguely human-shaped, but heavily muscled, and covered with bristly black fur.

  I checked to make sure the camera was recording. It was – all the cameras were wired to the server controlling the system, and it had enough capacity for three full weeks of video data before rolling over.

  “Nadia,” said Riordan, handing me something. “Your aetherometer.”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking it. “Good idea. Okay, here’s what I think’s happening. Whoever summoned that wraithwolf knows me and Quell were investigating, so he’s sent his pet monsters to spy on us.” I wondered if there was a two-legged wraithwolf watching his house right now. I hoped not – he had kids, and while he had magic, it wasn’t at the same level as mine. “But they don’t know I have an aetherometer, so I’m gonna track the link back to the summoner, find him, and kick his ass halfway to…”

  I frowned, my sentence trailing off as I glared at the aetherometer.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “What?” said Riordan.

  “This…doesn’t make sense,” I said. “It’s like the wraithwolf summoned itself.”

  Shadowlands creatures all had their own magical signatures, for lack of a better word. But when those creatures ended up on Earth, those signatures changed depending on how they got here. Creatures that slipped through a rift way or found their way here on their own had a different signature, a different aura, than summoned ones. Summoned creatures always had the binding of a summoning spell on them, and with the aetherometer or the proper spell, I could trace that binding to back to the summoner.

  Except this wraithwolf looked as if it had summoned itself.

  “Itself?” said Riordan. “Then it came through a random rift way?”

  “No, no,” I said, watching the dials twitch. “That looks different. This thing definitely has a summoning spell on it…but the spell tracks back to itself.”

  “Look at that,” said Riordan, pointing at the screen.

  The wraithwolf had turned towards the forest. I could see the base of its spine, and there was a metal plate affixed there. It was a rounded rectangle, and I think it was about the size of my hand.

  “You ever see a wraithwolf with a metal plate on it?” I said.

  “No,” said Riordan. “I’ve seen wraithwolves with enspelled collars, but never one with a plate on its back like that. Never seen one on two legs, either.”

  “Damn it,” I said, shaking my head. “I was hoping we could end this righ
t now. We’d better kill it.”

  “There might be more in the woods,” said Riordan. “Out of range of the motion detectors.”

  That made my skin crawl. I had bad, bad memories of wraithwolves stalking me through the trees. The hellish little town inside Arvalaeon’s Eternity Crucible had been surrounded by woods, and I had died there a few thousand times.

  Not an experience I wanted to repeat.

  “I’m not a veteran Shadow Hunter,” I said, “but I think chasing wraithwolves into the woods at night is a bad idea.”

  “It’s an exceptionally bad idea,” said Riordan.

  “But I think it’s close enough to the house that I can hit it from the patio door,” I said. There was a concrete patio behind the kitchen and the garage. Glass patio doors were a hideous security hole, but fortunately instead of glass doors, a single steel security door went to the patio. Delaxsicoria might have been vain and a little flighty, but she wasn’t stupid. “Turn off the lights. I’ll open the door and fry that damn wraithwolf with a volley of lightning globes. Then we can pry off the metal plate.”

  “Maybe it will have a serial number on it or something,” said Riordan.

  “Serial number?” I said.

  Something scratched at my mind, some idea, but I lost it in the urgency of the situation.

  “Get the lights,” I said.

  Riordan started to reach for the light switch and then froze.

  “Nadia,” he said.

  The wraithwolf had gone motionless on the display.

  It was staring right at the camera. Its eyes shone green on the screen. I had the uneasy feeling that the damn thing was looking right at me. The uneasy feeling turned to fury. If the creature wanted to take a swing at me, it was welcome. I would burn a hole right through its chest and out its back.

  Then the creature whirled and raced away with terrific speed, vanishing into the woods behind the house.

  We waited. Nothing moved on the screen, and nothing tripped the motion detectors.

  “It saw the camera,” I said. I looked up at Riordan. He was a lot taller than I was, so I had to crane my neck a bit. “You have more experience with wraithwolves than I do. Can they recognize cameras?”

  “I don’t have more experience with wraithwolves than you, Nadia,” he said, voice quiet.

  “What?” I said. “Oh, yeah, right, the Eternity Crucible. Let me put it another way. You have more experience not getting killed by wraithwolves than I do.” He inclined his head to concede the point. “Are they smart enough to recognize cameras?”

  “Probably not,” said Riordan. “I’ve never heard of a wraithwolf smart enough to recognize a security camera, but I could be wrong.” He ran a hand over his head. “But this isn’t a normal wraithwolf. They don’t usually walk on two legs. And you said the one that killed Doyle climbed up the side of his building?” I nodded. “Wraithwolves don’t do that. A normal wraithwolf would have turned into mist, flowed up the side of the building, rematerialized in his living room, and then gone on the attack.”

  “Technology,” I said. “Both Arnold Brauner and Pablo Leon’s mistress said that Doyle was involved in some sort of technology deal. Maybe it was those metal plates on the wraithwolves’ back.”

  “A technology that summons two-legged wraithwolves?” said Riordan. His frown deepened. “We saw those automated summoning circles in Last Judge Mountain.”

  “Hell,” I said. “Now that’s a bad thought.”

  “It is,” said Riordan. “I think we’d better help Colonel Quell find Pablo Leon as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I crossed to the island and dug my phone out of my bag. “But first I had better call Quell. If someone sent a wraithwolf to watch me, they might have sent one to watch him.”

  “Good idea,” said Riordan.

  I dialed the number and lifted the phone to my ear.

  ***

  Chapter 11: Bad Investments

  Owen Quell spent a restless night on the couch in his living room, a shotgun with the safety on within easy reach.

  Nadia MacCormac’s call came at a little after ten PM, just as Owen was getting ready for bed.

  “It was a two-legged wraithwolf,” she said, her voice grim with concern. “Just like the one we saw on the pizza video.”

  “Was it the same one?” said Owen, scowling as he paced back and forth in the basement. He had gone downstairs to take the call, so he didn’t wake his daughters, though Sabrina and Katrina were likely still awake in their room.

  “I don’t think so,” said Nadia. “The one that killed the Doyles had those bony plates, and this one didn’t. But it looked really close. It was definitely the same type of creature.”

  “Are you in any danger?” said Owen.

  There was a pause.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Nadia. “The thing tripped the motion detectors around my house. We watched it on the night vision camera for a few minutes. I think it saw the camera following its movements, and it turned and ran into the woods.”

  Owen blinked. Her house had motion detectors and night vision cameras?

  “Did you follow it?” said Owen.

  “Hell no,” said Nadia. “Our house is on the edge of Brookfield. A lot of woods nearby. Blundering through the forest at night to chase a wraithwolf? I might as well just cut my own throat and save everybody some time.”

  “Good point,” said Owen. “Were you able to get a reading on your aetherometer?”

  “Yeah,” said Nadia. “And it was weird. The wraithwolf registered as a summoned creature, but the summoning spell twisted back onto itself.”

  “Then the wraithwolf…summoned itself?” said Owen.

  “Looks that way,” said Nadia. “It didn’t get here through a random rift way, that would read differently on the aetherometer. It’s definitely a summoned creature, and the spell reads like it summoned itself.” She paused and said something to someone in the background. Probably her husband. Nadia had said very little about the man, but she had said she needed to pick him up from the airport. “I’m going to send you the video file from my security server. You remember how the wraithwolf we saw climbing Doyle’s building had that metal plate at the base of its spine? This one has the same kind of plate.”

  Owen frowned. “You think it’s some sort of summoning device?”

  “Maybe,” said Nadia. “I know it’s possible to build a machine to summon Shadowlands creatures.” Her voice darkened. “The US government was working on that kind of crap right before the Conquest. Maybe that was the ‘technology’ deal that Doyle and Leon were working on.”

  “It’s possible,” said Owen. His phone buzzed with a notification, and he glanced at the screen. Nadia had just sent him a message with a large video attachment. “But that’s a reach. Doyle was the kind of guy to make his money by cheating his contractors and shorting his suppliers. Not by summoning Shadowlands creatures.”

  “He was also the kind of guy who didn’t get all that upset when his building fell over and killed some people,” said Nadia.

  “Good point,” said Owen. “Listen…are you safe? Do you want me to send some officers over?”

  “What? No, no, I’m fine,” said Nadia. “Those wraithwolves aren’t getting past my security systems or my aetherometer, and if one tries to break into the house, I’ll fry it.” She hesitated. “Also, my husband is with me, and he has some…um, experience dealing with Shadowlands creatures. I’m probably safer than you are. Which is why I’m calling. The only reason the wraithwolf is following me is because I was investigating Doyle’s murder. And if Doyle’s killer saw us together…”

  “Then he or she might have a wraithwolf following me, too,” said Owen.

  “Yeah,” said Nadia. She hesitated. “Look, you want to bring your wife and kids and come to my house? It’s pretty secure, and we’ve got the room.”

  Owen thought about the awful pictures of the Doyle crime scene. Then again, Owen was a veteran of the Wizard�
�s Legion, and he had spells that could kill a wraithwolf. His house had doors with steel cores, and all the windows had wire mesh. And unlike Doyle’s condo, all the windows were locked. Owen and his family were secure here.

  Of course, Doyle had thought the same, right up until he died.

  “I think we’ll be fine for now,” said Owen. “But we’ll be careful. I’ll see you at nine tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Nadia. “You better be careful. I don’t want to explain to the High Queen how you got killed.”

  “Same for you,” said Owen, and he ended the call.

  He opened the attachment Nadia had sent him and looked at the video file. The quality was excellent, especially for a night vision camera. Owen watched as the two-legged wraithwolf prowled over the lawn, froze, and then whirled and vanished into the nearby forest. It wasn’t the same creature he had seen climbing up the side of Doyle’s condo building, but it did look very similar.

  Hopefully, there were just two of the things.

  But wraithwolves liked to hunt in packs, and Owen saw no reason why the two-legged variant would act differently.

  Anna waited for him at the top of the stairs. She knew that when he got calls at night, trouble followed.

  “That was Nadia MacCormac,” Owen said, closing the basement door behind him. “A creature liked the one that killed Ronald Doyle was prowling outside her house and ran off when she spotted it.”

  “Is she okay?” said Anna.

  “She’s fine,” said Owen. “She’s a stronger wizard than I am, and I think her husband is a veteran of the Wizard’s Legion. If it tries to break into her house, she’ll kill it. She was more worried about us.”

  “Are we in danger?” said Anna.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Owen. “I don’t think so, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight, and you’d better keep your gun nearby. If anything triggers the motion detectors in the yard, the floodlights will come on, and you and the girls can get to the panic room.”

  They’d done this a few times before. During some investigations, suspects had threatened both Owen and his family. He’d added a panic room to the basement, and during these times he’d slept on the couch, ready to greet any intruders with a shotgun.