Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Fortunately, the precautions proved unnecessary. Utter silence hung over the house all night, and nothing triggered the floodlights. Owen dozed on the couch and awoke tired and groggy, and showered and shaved while Anna and the girls got ready for school. He was reasonably confident the two-legged wraithwolf and its controller would not attempt anything during the day. Normal wraithwolves preferred to hunt at night, and so far, the two-legged creatures had not shown themselves during the day.

  He drove to the Central Office and was at his desk by 8:30. Some of Giles’ detectives had examined Leon’s financial records and found a variety of potential leads, and Owen went over them while he uploaded Nadia’s video file to the UNICORN records for the case. His spirits rose as he looked over the financial information. There were some definite leads there, and if luck was with them, they might find where Pablo Leon was hiding today…

  At 8:54, his phone rang with a call from Nadia.

  “Hey, do you mind meeting us on the front steps?” said Nadia. “My husband doesn’t have a consultant ID, and it will take forever to get through security.”

  Owen paused. “You brought your husband?”

  “Yes,” said Nadia. “He was super jealous I’m spending so much time with you and came to beat you up.”

  A man sighed in the background of the call. Owen heard a male voice say something about threatening a Homeland Security officer via proxy, and Nadia laughed.

  “No, seriously,” said Nadia. “We’ll be glad to have his help. He has more experience tracking down Shadowlands creatures than either of us. And if we want to wrap this up before anyone else gets killed, we need all the help we can get.”

  Owen was leery of the idea, but her logic was sound, and at the moment, he couldn’t do anything about it. He just hoped Nadia’s assessment of Mr. MacCormac’s capabilities was correct. Love could skew a woman’s judgment. Likely Carolina Leon had thought her husband would stay faithful when she married him.

  Owen collected his phone and coat, locked his office behind him, and headed to the front steps of the Central Office. As an afterthought, he worked the aurasight spell as he took the elevator to the lobby. That would help him gauge whether or not Nadia’s husband was the kind of man who could keep his head in a fight.

  He stepped into the November air, the sky overcast with gray clouds. Nadia stood at the foot of the steps, hands thrust into the pockets of her black pea coat. She was wearing her usual combination of sweater, black jeans, and steel-toed boots. Her emotional aura swirled around her, and while the normal tension was there, she was more relaxed than usual, and Owen saw a distinct tinge of postcoital satisfaction in her emotions. Clearly, her reunion with her husband had gone well, at least until the wraithwolf had shown up.

  She had accused him of being a voyeur. He didn’t want to be one, but unfortunately, both law enforcement work and mind magic meant that Owen sometimes learned way more about people than he ever really wanted to know.

  A man in jeans, a dark coat, and work boots stood next to her, his eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. That seemed excessive since it was a cloudy day. He was a good foot taller than Nadia, and the chest and upper sleeves of his jacket were tight with muscle. Owen immediately pegged him as the sort of man who would do tremendous damage in a hand-to-hand fight, who would take five or six good jolts with a stungun to subdue.

  His emotional aura…it looked cool, controlled. It was the aura of a veteran fighter keeping constant relaxed vigilance over his surroundings. But there was a dark core of hunger to his aura, something kept tightly constrained…

  By the time Owen reached the bottom of the stairs, he had figured it out.

  He was not in the least surprised that Mr. MacCormac was a Shadow Hunter. Owen hadn’t been sure what kind of man someone like Nadia would fall for. He supposed she could have ensnared a rich man, but he didn’t think Nadia could respect someone weaker than herself.

  A Shadow Hunter, though…yes, that would definitely be her type.

  “Colonel,” said Nadia. “This is my husband Riordan.”

  “Colonel Quell,” said Riordan. His deep voice was quiet and calm and carried a faint Texas twang. They shook hands, and Riordan squeezed just hard enough to let him know that he could have squeezed much harder.

  Owen smiled and did the same.

  “Nadia didn’t mention that you were a Shadow Hunter,” said Owen.

  “Nadia’s very discreet,” said Riordan. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “I’ve been at a few crime scenes where we had to stop investigating because we found a writ of execution from the Family of the Shadow Hunters,” said Owen. “Of course, it always turned out the dead men were involved in something nasty and would have gotten executed in a Punishment Day video after a trial if we’d gotten our hands on them.”

  “It’s the lack of a trial that bothers you, isn’t it?” said Riordan. “There’s a time and a place for that. But if we find whoever summoned the wraithwolves, there’s not going to be a trial.” He set it without boasting, without braggadocio or threats. He might have been asking Owen for a restaurant recommendation.

  Owen let out a breath. “I know. Our mutual employer,” he jerked his head at Nadia, “will want this stopped. She won’t be too picky about how we stop it. But if it’s at all possible to take the summoner alive, I want to do it.”

  “If it is possible,” said Riordan with the same quiet calm.

  “We’ve got to find the asshole first,” said Nadia. “Riordan has some ideas on how to do that.”

  “From what Nadia has said, Pablo Leon sounds like a halfway clever rich man,” said Riordan. Owen nodded. That matched his own assessment of Leon. “Smart enough to get rich, but not smart enough to hide his cheating from his wife, or smart enough to stay out of whatever trouble has caught him. He’ll think he’s hidden his money by moving it to shell corporations or some sort of false identity, but it won’t be that hard to find. I would suggest looking for additional companies or maybe living trusts that Leon might have started.”

  Owen grinned. “Mr. MacCormac, I think you’re a very smart man.”

  “Because you agree with me?” said Riordan.

  “That, and because we’re both right,” said Owen. “Some of the homicide guys have been going over Leon’s finances and turns out he does have a shell company. He’s been quietly moving money and assets into it over the last two years, probably to protect them from his wife when she divorces him. The company owns three different buildings – a warehouse in Wauwatosa, a house in Waukesha, and a little farm out in Sussex. I’d bet that Leon is hiding at one of those buildings.”

  “Shall we find out?” said Nadia.

  “I’ll drive,” said Owen.

  ###

  I thought we would take a Homeland Security SUV, but instead, we took an unmarked sedan from the Central Office’s parking ramp. If Leon was hiding from the summoner in one of his shell company’s buildings, he might be watching the road, and the sight of a Homeland Security SUV could spook him into doing something stupid.

  Owen drove, Riordan took the front passenger seat because he’s a lot taller than I am, and I squeezed into the back of the old car. I was afraid that Riordan and Owen would not get along. Riordan had seemed very ill-disposed towards Owen Quell after I described the fight with the mindtouch spell, though that was at least half my fault. Yet Riordan and Owen got along without any difficulty. They both had the air of men going about an unpleasant but necessary job competently and professionally.

  They had the same background experiences, I realized. They had both been men-at-arms and soldiers in the Wizard’s Legion. I had never done either, but I suppose both my husband and my fellow shadow agent were used to working with people they didn’t like under orders from higher authority.

  As we drove, I practiced the aurasight spell I had taken from Owen’s mind. I could see right away that it was going to be useful. When I cast it, I saw both Owen’s and Riordan’s emotional auras
without any difficulty. Riordan’s aura was calm but wary, with a dark core of leashed hunger that was his Shadowmorph. Owen’s aura was likewise vigilant, but he was worried. Really worried. I wondered why, and then realized he was probably thinking about his family and the two-legged wraithwolf.

  “You didn’t have any two-legged wraithwolves show up last night, did you?” I said.

  “No,” said Owen. “I looked around this morning. No footprints in our yard, and no footprints nearby. We have a nosy neighbor, and if she had seen a wraithwolf in her yard, I would have heard about it at length.” He shook his head. “Of course, the wraithwolf might have been clever enough to stay out of sight. Wonder why it was following us, though.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “The summoner knows we’re investigating him and wants to see what we’re up to.”

  “Probably,” said Riordan. “Except if the summoner wants to kill Doyle, Leon, and everyone involved in the technology deal, killing a Homeland Security investigator isn’t a good way to keep it quiet.”

  “Killing Doyle’s wife and children isn’t a good way to keep things quiet, either,” said Owen.

  “No,” said Riordan. “But summoners…they tend to go homicidally insane. Especially the inexperienced ones. Working a summoning spell isn’t hard, and you can cast it with blood if you don’t have any magical ability. But calling a Shadowlands creature creates a link with it so the summoner can control it. And that door swings both ways. Without enough mental discipline, the Shadowlands creature starts influencing its summoner, and might even take control entirely. The summoner might have called up the creature just to kill one person, but the bloodlust takes over after a while.”

  “That matches what I’ve seen,” said Owen. “You deal with summoners often?”

  “More often than I would like,” said Riordan. “The knowledge of the basic summoning spells keeps circulating, no matter how hard the Inquisition tries to suppress it. Which is why summoners must be stopped as soon as possible. Once they start murdering at random, the killings escalate until they draw enough attention to themselves to get killed, or they lose control of their creatures entirely.”

  “Well,” said Owen. “If Leon’s still alive, maybe we can get some answers out of him.”

  If he was alive. I kind of had my doubts about that.

  We stopped at the warehouse first. That was a bust. It was a typical small warehouse, not all that different from Modern Sewer Systems, a small building with cinder block walls, a corrugated metal roof, and a chain-link fence. Except the gate stood open, as did the warehouse doors. We drove inside and around the building, and it was completely empty. The property was idle, and there was no hint it had been used for anything for years.

  About forty minutes later, we pulled up outside of the house Leon’s shell company owned in Waukesha. It was a three-bedroom house in a residential neighborhood, and it looked like it could have used some work. The paint was cracked and peeling, especially on the front porch, but the house was otherwise in good repair, and the grass looked as if it had been cut by a riding mower and there were no leaves on the lawn. Probably Leon paid someone to keep the place from becoming totally decrepit.

  “Looks abandoned,” said Owen. “There are a bunch of advertising circulars in plastic bags on the front porch, and all the curtains are open.” Through the opened windows I could see empty rooms.

  “If he was hiding there,” said Riordan, “he might be smart enough to let the advertising circulars pile up.”

  Owen sighed. “I’ll need to get a warrant before we can look around inside. We already got one for his financial information, so…”

  “Or,” I said, donning a watch cap, tucking my hair beneath it, and pulling on my gloves, “I can take a quick look around.”

  Owen paused. “I really can’t condone that.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to condone it,” I said. “But can you look the other way?”

  He sighed. “Ten minutes.” Then he made a point of staring at the street.

  I cast the Occlusion spell and got out of the car. The Occlusion spell was a minor bit of illusion and mind magic, not as powerful as the Cloak or the Mask spell, but nonetheless useful. So long as I didn’t do anything threatening or aggressive, anyone who saw me would forget I was there or fail to take notice of me. If I stood in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, people would walk around me without realizing that I was there.

  Wrapped in the Occlusion spell, I jogged around the back of the house, peering into the windows. The interior of the house looked empty. The back door was locked, but a simple spell of focused telekinetic force opened it, and I stepped inside.

  That proved a waste of time. I walked through the basement, both floors, and the attic, and I saw nothing but dust bunnies, some dead insects, and a few old mouse traps. There was no trace that anyone had been inside the building for years. On the main floor, I cast the aurasight spell and looked around. I could see the emotional aura of Riordan and Owen in the car, and the auras of a few of the nearby neighbors, but the house was deserted.

  I walked to the car and let myself in the back. I was worried Riordan and Owen might have started arguing in my absence, but instead, they were discussing the pros and cons of various kinds of handguns.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s been in that place for years. Leon isn’t hiding there.”

  “Damn.” Owen sighed and started the engine. “It seemed like such a good idea. Well, we’ve still got that farm to check.”

  A half-hour later we were driving through downtown Sussex, such as it was. Sussex was a little village northwest of Milwaukee proper, famous for a bunch of nearby stone quarries. It seemed to be mostly farmers and various quarry employees. Owen drove outside town, down a narrow country lane, and turned into a gravel driveway that led into a forest.

  “A farm?” I said, looking around at the trees. “What does it grow, lumber?”

  “It’s zoned as a farm,” said Owen. “I don’t think it’s actually been worked for a century or so. Forest must have grown up around…wait.”

  He tapped the brakes, and the car came to a halt.

  The driveway ended in a small clearing, and in the center of the clearing was a somewhat dilapidated farmhouse. It had been painted red, but the paint was cracked and peeling, and the roof needed work. Parked in front of the house was a Royal Motors SUV adorned with the Modern Sewer Systems company logo.

  I looked at the license plate. “That’s Leon’s car.”

  “Yup,” said Owen. He backed out of the driveway, parked on the gravel shoulder of the road, and shut off the engine. “Looks like we found his hiding place. Better let me do the talking, at least at first.”

  We got out of the car and walked up the driveway.

  The house’s front door swung open, and Pablo Leon stalked out.

  My first reaction was completely inappropriate confusion. Both Carolina Leon and Tonette Caplan had been striking women. Pablo Leon was short, fat, bald, sweating, and his mustache looked as if he had cut the bristles off a paintbrush and glued them to his face. How the hell had he seduced two pretty women? He wasn’t that rich.

  My second reaction was alarm because he was holding an M-99 carbine pointed at us.

  “Stay back!” said Leon, waving the gun in our general direction. “Stay back! I know what you are!”

  We raised our hands.

  “Mr. Leon,” said Owen in a loud but calm voice. “My name’s Owen Quell. I’m with Homeland Security, and I…”

  Leon yelped and pulled the trigger. I flinched, my reflexes starting to throw me to the ground, and a patch of dirt a dozen feet in front of us exploded.

  “I’m not kidding!” said Leon. “I’ll kill all three of you. I know that I can’t hurt you after you transform, so I’m going to shoot you now. Turn around and walk away by the count of three, or I’ll kill you!”

  “Mr. Leon,” said Owen. “We…”

  “One!” shouted Leon.
r />   “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, my patience evaporating. “Follow me.”

  I gestured and cast the Shield spell, keying it to deflect kinetic force. A dome of hazy, rippling gray light appeared in front of me, and I stepped forward, putting myself in front of Riordan and Owen.

  Leon started spraying bullets as we advanced. I caught them all on my spell, deflecting the rounds into the ground or the trees. Leon’s weapon ran out of ammunition as we reached the porch, and he stammered out something terrified and started to fumble in his jacket for another magazine. Riordan was faster. He bounded up the stairs and snatched the weapon out of Leon’s hands.

  “That,” said Riordan, “wasn’t nice.”

  “No,” said Leon, shaking with terror. “Oh, God! No, no, no, no.”

  “Mr. Leon,” said Owen. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m with Homeland Security. We’re investigating the murder of Ronald Doyle…”

  “No!” wailed Leon. He would have run back into the house, but Riordan caught his arm and held him without any particular effort. “No! I know you’re part of it. Homeland Security’s part of it! What…what do you want? I’ll give you anything if you don’t kill me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would be like this!”

  He looked like he was on the verge of breaking down.

  “Hey,” I said. “Look at me.”

  Leon blinked and turned his gaze at me. I was half-annoyed, half-amused, to see his eyes flick down to my chest before settling back on my face. The man obviously thought himself moments from death, and still took the time for one last ogle. And I was wearing a sweater and a heavy coat, so it’s not like there was even all that much to see.

  “Watch this,” I said, and I gestured. A sphere of fire whirled to life over my palm. “You know many Homeland Security officers who can do that?”

  Leon gaped at me. “Who…who are you? How did you stop the bullets? That was a spell, wasn’t it?”