Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Or, possibly, Tarlia would tell them what they were doing next.

  “Okay,” said Owen, and he produced his cell phone and hit the contact for Major Jacob Giles, head of the homicide division.

  Giles picked up on the second ring. “Owen?”

  “Yeah, Jake,” said Owen.

  “What the hell is going on?” said Giles. “Two dozen officers are taking sick time today, and another dozen are absent without leave. Is there some kind of labor walkout going on? Or is flu season getting started early?”

  “It’s a lot worse,” said Owen. “We’ve got serious trouble. Are you alone?”

  There was a pause, and then the sound of a door closing.

  “Yeah, I’m alone,” said Giles.

  “I’ll give it to you straight,” said Owen. “Lieutenant Kyle Warren somehow got his hands on machines that let people transform themselves into half-human, half-wraithwolf hybrids. They’re going on murder rampages. Warren himself transformed into a wraithwolf and killed the Doyle family. Five officers tried to murder Pablo Leon an hour ago, and nine more tried to kill my family shortly thereafter.”

  There was a long, long pause.

  “Please tell me this is a practical joke,” said Giles.

  “I really wish that it was,” said Owen. “But Warren gave these devices to at least twenty officers, maybe thirty, and the wraithwolves are twisting their minds. They’re going to start spree killing if we don’t stop them.”

  “Christ,” said Giles. “You said they went after your family? Are Anna and the kids okay?”

  “They are,” said Owen. “We got here just in time.”

  “We?” said Giles.

  “Me and Nadia MacCormac,” said Owen.

  “The girl from the Sky Hammer video,” said Giles. “I know you’ve been working together.”

  “We have,” said Owen. “I don’t know who I can trust inside the department.” He took a deep breath. “I know the High Queen is sending either Inquisitors or soldiers from the Wizard’s Legion, but I don’t know how many and I don’t know when they’re getting here. If we’re going to get a handle on this mess, we need help…”

  “You have it,” said Giles, and Owen felt a wave of relief. He had been prepared for suspicion and accusation. Thirteen Homeland Security officers had died in the last few hours, and another one was captive in Owen’s basement. “I know you’re solid, Owen. Tell me what you need.”

  “Find officers you can trust,” said Owen. “If you’re not sure about them, check their backs.”

  “Their backs?”

  “The wraithwolf machine is called a Fusion device, and it looks like a thin bronze plate about the size of your hand,” said Owen. “If they have one, it will be fixed to the base of their spines. Once you have some men you can trust, come to my house. We should be able to figure out our next move by then.”

  “Okay,” said Giles. “We’ll be there soon. Keep your eyes open, Owen.”

  “You, too,” said Owen. “If Warren and his followers figure out that you’re helping me, they might come after you.”

  “Well, you’re the veteran of the Wizard’s Legion,” said Giles. “If we’ve got wraithwolves running around, we need magic. See you soon.”

  Giles ended the call, and Owen returned his phone to his belt.

  “Any luck?” said Riordan.

  “The head of homicide is a friend of mine, and he’s on his way,” said Owen. He looked at the dead and sighed. “Might want to arrest me after all this, but…”

  The blood ring shivered against his right hand, and the message filled his thoughts.

  When Owen had sent telepathic messages to the High Queen in the past, sometimes she had responded at once, and sometimes it had taken days for her to answer.

  Evidently, she agreed that this was a serious situation.

  “Nadia, Owen,” came Tarlia’s voice inside of Owen’s head. “You are to act at once to destroy the hybrid wraithwolves. Take some of them alive for questioning if you can, but only if it is practical. I am sending ten soldiers of the Wizard’s Legion to you, commanded by my handmaiden Tythrilandria. Once they arrive, the three of you will take command and destroy the wraithwolves. Make sure all the Fusion devices are secured. Tythrilandria’s helicopter will land in Owen’s backyard in another five hours at the most. Be ready to act at once.”

  The mental contact ended.

  Owen blinked and looked at Nadia.

  “You got that, too?” said Nadia.

  Owen nodded.

  “For the benefit of those of us who do not have magic rings?” said Riordan.

  “The High Queen’s sending Tyth and some soldiers of the Wizard’s Legion to help us,” said Nadia. “Looks like we’re going wraithwolf hunting.”

  ***

  Chapter 15: Wolves’ Den

  The next five hours were busy.

  Major Jacob Giles arrived about thirty minutes after Owen summoned him. I was skeptical about calling in anyone from Homeland Security, but Riordan had a point. We needed the help of Homeland Security officers who hadn’t been corrupted. Thirteen dead Homeland Security officers were impossible to hide.

  Well, maybe not impossible. Had it been up to me, I might have opened a rift way, pushed their bodies through it, and let the anthrophages and wraithwolves of the Shadowlands scavenge on the dead. No one would ever know what happened. But Owen was a Homeland Security officer, and I could tell he was upset by what we had learned. I mean, yeah, Warren’s followers had tried to murder his entire family. But they were Homeland Security officers, men and women who had sworn the same oath that Owen took very seriously, and so their betrayal stung.

  I supposed we were doing this as officially as possible.

  I just hoped it didn’t come back to bite us.

  Two more Homeland Security SUVs joined the first pair, and Giles and five other officers emerged. I stood next to Owen on the porch and watched them, ready to start raining destruction if they transformed into wraithwolves. But they stayed in human form. Giles was a thin, dark-skinned man with lined features. Probably a lot stronger than he looked.

  “Jake,” said Owen. “Thanks for coming.”

  “This is a mess, Owen,” said Giles. “But we’re not having a bunch of wraithwolves run around Milwaukee, not on my watch.” He glanced at me. “Don’t you own a fruit company?”

  “It’s my brother’s company,” I said. “I do consulting gigs on the side.”

  Giles grunted, and then looked at Owen. “Better show me the bodies.”

  We went downstairs. I half-expected Giles and his men to erupt with anger at the sight of dead Homeland Security officers, but they regarded the scene with sober eyes. It helped that some of the dead officers had been halfway between human and wolf form when I had killed them. It helped even more that Kirby was awake and threatening to eat us all alive once he got his Fusion device back.

  “Christ, Owen,” said Giles, shaking his head. “I hoped you were wrong about all this, I’ll admit that, but…”

  “I know what you mean,” said Owen.

  They settled on a plan. Some of Giles’s men started documenting the dead, taking pictures and gathering identification. Giles had friends in the county coroner’s office, and he made some calls to collect the dead. His men began bagging up the corpses in the basement. Giles and Riordan went to Sussex to pick up Leon and take care of the dead there, and to retrieve my aetherometer.

  If the High Queen wanted us to go after Warren and the Fusion wraithwolves, I was going to need the instrument.

  I gathered up all the Fusion devices and stuffed them into a paper shopping bag. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but I didn’t think it was a good idea for them to go to the coroner’s office. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if someone touched one without a glove, but I didn’t want some poor mortuary worker to find out the hard way.

  Anna and her two oldest daughters emerged from upstairs, saw the large number of guests, and then dec
ided to make an enormous pot of chili to feed everyone. I suppose everyone deals with stress in their own way, and cooking seemed to be Anna Quell’s. Come to think of it, I was pretty hungry. I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, and I had used a lot of magic today, and using magical force was at least as taxing as intense exercise. I took a bowl of chili, thanked Anna, and went out to stand guard on the porch with Owen.

  I wondered what the neighbors thought of four Homeland Security SUVs parked on along the curb.

  “That’s really good chili,” I said around a mouthful. I liked spicy food. The textures of certain foods reminded me of some of my more unpleasant experiences in the Eternity Crucible, but spice was a good way to overcome that. Riordan, Russell, and the Marneys were all bemused at how I had started putting hot sauce on almost anything.

  “Anna’s a good cook,” said Owen. “She wasn’t when we got married. She ate smoothies and stir fry and nothing else. But once the twins came along, she decided to teach herself and got good at it.”

  “Question,” I said. “Your first three daughters are named Katrina, Sabrina, and Antonia, right?” Owen nodded. “The names all end with the letter A. So why’d you break pattern with June?”

  “Well,” said Owen, “we thought we’d stop with three kids. Then we took a vacation in June, and Anna got pregnant again, and…”

  “You named her after the month she was conceived in?” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “Ew.”

  Owen shrugged. “It’s a good name. And we didn’t have any female relatives named June. Where were you from originally? Milwaukee?”

  “No, Seattle.”

  Owen nodded. “Well, maybe there’s a Nadia Park somewhere in Seattle, or a Nadia Street or a Nadia Avenue, and your parents…”

  “Nope,” I said. “Not thinking about that.”

  Though I had a sudden urge to pull out my phone and see if there really was a Nadia Street or something in Seattle, but I decided that I really didn’t want to know.

  Riordan and Giles returned an hour later, and Riordan handed over my bag. I retrieved my aetherometer, and we walked the basement, making sure that we hadn’t missed any of the Fusion devices. We hadn’t, and for lack of a better place to store them, we stashed the things in the Quells’ panic room.

  Tyth and the Wizard’s Legion arrived at about three in the afternoon.

  We heard the roar of the chopper’s rotor before it came into sight. I walked into the backyard with Riordan, Owen, and Giles, and a minute later, a big black helicopter appeared over the trees. It circled a few times, and then began to descend, the wind blowing over the Quells’ yard. Just as well that the trees had already lost their leaves, or else the gale from the rotor would have knocked them down. The helicopter blocked the driveway when it landed, but between the yard and the driveway, there was just enough room for the big craft to set down.

  The engines powered down with a whine, the rotors spinning to a stop.

  “Okay,” said Owen. “I’ve never had a helicopter land in my back yard before.”

  A door on the side of the helicopter opened, and an Elven woman got out.

  She was wearing a strange costume – combat boots, cargo pants, a T-shirt, and a weapon harness and tactical vest. Which wasn’t the strange part. No, what was strange was that she wore a knee-length leather coat colored an eye-watering shade of pink over her combat clothing. It looked extremely out of place. But I knew that she had a good reason for it. Lord Morvilind had enspelled the coat so that its pockets could hold much, much more than their interior volume would otherwise allow. Tythrilandria, handmaiden to the High Queen (and shadow agent) could fit enough weapons and ammo to equip a battalion in her pockets. You know how some women cart around giant purses that hold everything they could potentially need? Tyth’s coat was like that, just times a thousand.

  Behind Tyth human men in black uniforms emerged from the helicopter. They had stylized silver lightning bolts on their collars, the symbol of the Wizard’s Legion, and wore tactical equipment similar to Tyth’s, albeit with no pink coats. I walked forward with Riordan, Owen, and Giles, and Tyth jogged forward, her dark hair streaming behind her.

  She grinned when she saw us, silver eyes glinting. She was glad to see Riordan and me. And why not? We had done some crazy stuff together and survived. I mean, we had gone to Mars and back.

  “Lady Elf,” said Owen. “Thank you for coming.”

  “We all go where the High Queen commands, Colonel,” said Tyth. Whoever had taught her English had managed to give her a pronounced California accent. She talked very fast, except for the vowels, which she tended to draw out. Her eyes shifted to me, and she grinned. “And it’s good to see you and Riordan again, Nadia.”

  Before I could react, she caught me in a hug. Giles and Owen looked nonplussed. I am not a hugger, as I have mentioned before. Tyth, however, definitely was.

  “Hey,” I said when we broke apart. “It’s good to see you, too. This is Colonel Owen Quell, head of the local branch of Homeland Security’s special investigations. Major Jacob Giles, head of homicide. Guys, this is Tythrilandria, handmaiden to the High Queen.”

  “Lady Elf,” said Giles with a polite bow.

  Some Elven nobles were rigid to the point of pedantry about ceremony. Tyth wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t even a noble since her family had essentially been survivalists hiding from the Archons in the wilderness of Kalvarion. But the Archons had murdered her entire family and kept Tyth as a “comfort woman” until Morvilind killed that particular group of Archons.

  Yeah. I don’t feel bad that I helped Morvilind kill all the Archons on the day of the Mage Fall. But if I ever start to feel bad, I think about Tyth’s family. Or all the other Elven families the Archons murdered in the three centuries they ruled Kalvarion.

  “Just call me Tyth,” said Tyth with a sunny smile. “Tythrilandria is way too long to say in a fight.” Her smile faded. “And we’re about to be in a fight. Captain?”

  One of the soldiers came up to join us. He was a leathery-faced man of about forty, which graying black hair and hard black eyes. I couldn’t tell his nationality at a glance, but I thought he looked Mediterranean. Maybe Italian or Greek. I felt his arcane aura as well. Quite a bit weaker than mine, but still stronger than most human wizards.

  “Lady Tythrilandria,” said the man in English with a heavy Spanish accent.

  “This is Captain Alcazar of the Wizard’s Legion,” said Tyth. “He’s brought a squad with him. All veteran wizards.”

  “I have been ordered to obey the commands of Lady Tythrilandria on this excursion,” said Alcazar.

  “But you guys have more experience with this kind of thing than I do,” said Tyth. She gestured at Riordan and me, and the ring of a shadow agent glinted on her hand, invisible to everyone but me and Owen. “So I want you to plan it, and we’ll do whatever you decide.”

  “Sir,” said Alcazar to Riordan. “I am given to understand that you are a Shadow Hunter?”

  “That’s right,” said Riordan.

  “That is good,” said Alcazar. “You have experience with this kind of thing. I understand we are clearing out a nest of wraithwolves?”

  “Not quite, Captain,” I said. “If it was just wraithwolves, we could get the local Elven nobles or the Shadow Hunters to take them down. But traitorous Homeland Security officers have obtained devices that allow them to summon wraithwolves into their flesh.” Alcazar raised one dark eyebrow. “It turns them into hybrids of human and wraithwolf. They’re fast, strong, deadly, and absolutely crazy. We need to kill them or force them to surrender and take back the devices that allow them to transform.” I took a deep breath. “But the wraithwolves have twisted their minds, so we’re probably going to have to kill them all.”

  “Well,” said Alcazar. “Just another day in the Legion.”

  ###

  To his mild surprise, Owen wound up running the briefing.

  Captain Alcazar’s squad filled the living r
oom. Some of the men sat on the couches, others on the floor. Two of the wizards stood near the front door, watching for any sign of the enemy. It brought back memories of Owen’s own time in the Legion, of attending briefings like this. The Wizard’s Legion tended to act as Tarlia’s personal force during Shadowlands campaigns, but the soldiers of the Legion also did special operations like this.

  Anna moved through the soldiers, serving coffee, which they seemed to appreciate.

  “Our targets,” said Owen, tapping a key on his laptop, “are here.” A picture of the abandoned Church of the Modern Apostles appeared on the TV screen. It looked like a traditional white church with tall windows, though the white paint was peeling, and several shingles were missing from the roof.

  “Where did you obtain that photograph?” said Alcazar, frowning over his coffee.

  “Commercial realtor’s website,” said Owen. “The property has been for sale for the last five years, but no one wants to buy the church or tear it down and develop the land. And the commercial realtor’s website,” he tapped another key, and the image changed, “also has this handy floor plan of the building.”

  Alcazar grunted in approval.

  “Based on intelligence gathered from our prisoner,” said Owen, “our targets use the church’s basement for their base and for practice and training with their transformation devices.”

  “What kind of numbers are we looking at here?” said one of the other soldiers.

  “Between twenty and thirty,” said Owen. “Our intelligence indicates that Lieutenant Warren has access to only forty-eight of the transformation devices.” Nadia had told him not to share any details about the Singularity or Catalyst Corporation with the soldiers, and Owen agreed with her caution. In this instance, what the men of the Wizard’s Legion didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. “It’s possible that there are more. Warren may have been able to obtain new devices. However, there are indications that Warren wasn’t able to find enough recruits to use all his machines, so we don’t know exactly what kind of numbers we will face.”