In the Werewolf's Den (16 page)

And Arenesol was right. By informing on Carl, Danielle had killed those little girls as surely as if she'd yanked their pretend swords from their hands and thrust through their hearts.

Joe had lied to her. He'd promised to simply block the Tiger escape. Joe had been the rock she'd built her world on after her mother's death. If he lied about this, Danielle had to question everything he'd ever told her. Everything she'd learned from the day she decided to become a warder.

She swallowed hard.

Carl set her down on the ground. Around him, the mixed party of elves, dwarves, vampires, trolls, and
Were
milled. The two trolls leaned against a freestanding wall, the remains of a long-deserted brick home, gasping for breath.

"We can't go back to the lab,” Carl stated. “If they knew about the breakout, they'll be looking for us there."

"What about the warder?” Arenesol wasn't letting up. “If you don't kill her now, she'll betray us again."

"She was doing her job,” Carl argued.

Arenesol spat on the ground. “Those murderers who slaughtered my precious daughters were doing their job, too. Nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to join the warders."

He squared up against Carl, almost pressing his narrow elf-chest against the breadth of Carl's muscular torso. “Plenty of normals either ignore the magical or cooperate with us. So don't give me any crap about just doing her job. She killed my daughters and fifty of my kinsmen as sure as if she'd slit their throats with a silver blade."

The elf backed off abruptly at Carl's wolf-like growl.

Arenesol put up a hand. “Damn it, Carl, listen to me. I've got a lot of respect for you. You came into the zone and made things happen. A lot of folks figured you were just a crazy scientist puttering away with your chemicals and test tubes. But that's not it. We've done more building in the zone since you got here than we did in the decade before you arrived. I know you're smart, and not just with the I.Q."

The elf kicked the ground and, for the first time, seemed to search for words. Finally he continued. “So why don't you show some of that intelligence and think this through? You don't seriously think the warder is going to owe you for keeping her alive, do you? Because, like as not, she's already got orders to terminate you. The warders don't put up with magical who try to make things better."

"That's just not true,” Carl argued. His voice almost shook with surprise. “They let me out of jail so I could do my research."

Arenesol laughed. “Yeah, but what happens when you find your cure? You already know that most of us won't take it. Don't you think they know that?"

"I don't—"

"You hadn't thought about that, right? They'll use it on any magical who steps out of line. Cure him, as they'll call it. Except they won't let them rejoin normal society. They'll just classify him as latent and leave him here. Surrounded by the talented. Laden with memories of being something beyond merely human, but forever stripped of those abilities. It'll be like giving a man sight, then yanking out his eyes."

Carl slammed a fist into the brick wall. “That's not what I intend, Arenesol, and you know it."

"What you intend may not have a lot to do with anything, Carl. They'll use what you bring them and then spit you out like a watermelon seed."

"Maybe you're right,” Carl stated softly. “What do you think, Danielle?"

She'd been certain Carl thought she was still unconscious. She'd modulated her breathing, even her heartrate to keep her secret.

Obviously, he'd seen through her best efforts. Equally obviously, she was about to die.

In the Warder Academy, she'd learned to lie. To keep her composure when telling the most outrageous story, and to make even herself believe it. She couldn't imagine a lie that would fool anyone now. Besides, she was tired of lying, emotionally drained by the lies that Joe Smealy, the man she had trusted more than anyone else, had used against her.

After Joe's betrayal, trust was hard. But it didn't matter. Danielle threw away all of her training, all of what she'd been taught about the impaired. She decided to trust Carl.

She struggled to her feet, unwilling to face her death lying down.

"If the warders want to use your invention as a weapon, they never told me."

"And you just thought they would let millions of supposedly cured talented integrate back into normal society.” Arenesol's sarcastic voice cut through the night.

She shrugged. “My job was to herd Carl. Keep him doing his job."

"Is that right? And how did you do?"

She hoped that the darkness of the night, lit only by distant fires as parts of the zone burned, would hide the flush on her face. She had been a terrible herder. She'd had sex with her herd, failed to follow through on a termination order, and let him create a gang in the zone. Even though she had headed off a dangerous breakout, she could hardly claim any great success, even for that.

"That's between me and the Special Agent in Charge."

"I don't imagine Joe Smealy will be very happy when he finds out that you didn't terminate Carl. Or are you counting on us doing that for you?"

The question was transparent. Arenesol was trying to get her to admit to something he had no evidence about. Unfortunately, they could find evidence of her bugs if they looked for them.

"Why are you listening to him?” she demanded of Carl, trying to take the offensive even though her heart wasn't really in it. “He's a creepy elf who deals in drugs, explosives, and blackmail."

For a moment, Carl's eyes softened and she thought she was getting through.

Then he shook his head slowly. “We're going to have to talk about this, Danielle. But not tonight."

Danielle shrugged. He thought there might actually be a later. If only that was a possibility.

"We've got a backup compound just down Bishop Street,” he told her. “I don't think your bugs would have picked up any discussion of it so it should be safe. I'd like you to go there with Snori. We need some time apart."

"You can't send me away like this, Carl. I'm your herder."

He shook his head. “Not any more, Danielle. After what you did, and after what the warders did, I don't owe you anything. But I owe Arenesol and the Tigers payback. So tonight, I'm going hunting."

He transformed as she watched, his torso lengthening, his nose and mouth growing together into the wolf's grinning face.

The wolf glanced at Arenesol, caught a sign that even Danielle's warder-trained senses missed, and slipped around the corner.

"Let's go, Mistress Goodman,” Snori suggested.

"I'm going after Carl. And if you think you can drag me off to some safe house, you're just looking for trouble."

"Damn right,” the troll told her. “Just because I have a bum leg doesn't mean that I'm going to hole up in some little cave somewhere and let other people take care of business."

She realized she hadn't thought about Snori's leg since she'd taken out his knee.

"I'm sorry about that kick,” she told him.

"Hey, it was legal. You were trying to win. Same as me,” Snori said. “Course if I'd hurt you any, the boss would have really let me have it."

"You knew he was good, didn't you?"

Snori shrugged. “We trained together a couple of times. Never fought anyone like him before. He's so, well, peaceful. But he's just where he needs to be."

"Right. Especially if he knows your tricks, you little spy. I can't believe you were pretending to be a green belt."

Snori gave her a shy smile that looked hopelessly out of place on that massive pitted face. “I always start as a white belt in a new dojo. Shows respect."

For the first time in days, Danielle felt the hint of a smile on her lips. “I guess so.” Changing the subject suddenly, she said, “So, what are we going to do tonight?"

Snori stretched his hands before him, the knuckles cracking nearly as loud as gunshots. “Well, the normals are rioting again. I think it's time we taught them that not all of the magical are patsies. And there's something else."

Danielle's blood chilled. Her job was to protect normals, even lowlife normals who decided to riot. “Yeah? What else, Snori?"

"Maybe I'm misjudging you, Danielle, but it seems to me that you've got some sense. You're not one of those who hates people because they're different. If I'm right, I think you should see some of your brother warders at work."

Danielle knew what warders did—she'd spent four years in the Academy including six months as an intern in the Los Angeles zone protective force. Still, she needed to stay close to Carl if she was going to do her duty. Humoring Snori seemed a lot easier than fighting him. “All right I'd be interested in that. But I'm not going to let you attack normals. You know protecting normals is the prime directive for all warders."

Snori laughed. “That may be what they taught you in the Academy, Danielle, but it just ain't so. Come on. You've got things to learn."

The troll moved remarkably silently for a four-hundred-pound mountain of muscle and bone. He sniffed the air occasionally, using his magically enhanced senses to track Carl and his mob.

Danielle trotted alongside and used her control over her body functions to flush the damage from her system. Whatever happened, she'd need to be one hundred percent.

The night air hung oppressively over the Dallas zone, moist with the humidity from the encroaching Gulf of Mexico, rank with the scent of fire, and filled with distant shouts, screams, and the crackle of gunfire.

Twice Snori pulled her aside and hid in the shadows as warder armored personnel carriers tore past. One sent a burst of automatic weaponry into a nearby apartment, phosphate tracers igniting a blaze that continued despite the efforts of a bucket brigade that formed after the warder vehicle had moved on.

"The warders must have had information about that apartment,” Danielle said. She wasn't sure whether she was trying to convince herself or Snori.

The troll just laughed. “Do you know why you lost your match against Carl?"

She shook her head, halfway angry at the change of subject and halfway intrigued. She did want to know.

"It's because you refuse to see what's there in front of you. Just like now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You put a lot of energy into that ignorance. In your fight, you believed that Carl would fold, would turn wolf. You depended on it, even when you could see he wasn't going to. You dug deeper and deeper into your energy levels to push him over the edge, but here's what you were missing. Carl wasn't your enemy there. You were.

"And now, you're still at it, using all your energies to sustain a fantasy that just can't bear the weight. Those warders didn't have information about that apartment. They had a machine gun and a trigger-happy gunman. That's all."

As if to punctuate his words, another burst of heavy machine gun fire cut through the night.

Danielle shook her head. Snori's five-cent philosophizing had to be wrong, but she found it disturbing nonetheless.

"Let's keep moving,” Snori said.

An army of warders and warder-led punks swarmed across the zone barrier, torches and firearms clasped in their hands.

Carl put down his binoculars and sighed. “You say they do this fairly often?"

Mike the Vampire shrugged. “This riot is bigger than most. But not a year goes by that we don't have a big organized affair. Takes a while for their informants to sniff out enough loot to make a good riot worthwhile."

The warder guards did nothing to stem the flow of normals into the zone. They did slow the return flow—mostly young men carrying televisions, food, and alcohol they'd looted from the zone. The goal, it seemed, was to ensure that the warders got a cut of the loot.

One of the men carried a wiggling sack over his shoulder.

At a warder's request, he set it down and opened the bag.

A teenaged elf girl shook herself out of the hampering material and made a dash for freedom—and was caught by the warder's bullet between her shoulder blades.

"They don't mind a little rape within the zone, but frown on bringing it outside,” Mike observed.

At his side, Arenesol hissed. Well, Carl couldn't blame him. He'd lost two daughters tonight. Seeing that child murdered would only freshen those memories.

Carl swallowed, tried to keep control, but failed. He spewed the contents of his stomach over the ground. However long he lived, that elf girl's expression, and the explosion of flesh and blood when it emerged from her tiny chest would be seared indelibly into his memory.

He didn't know which was worse. The warder's casual contempt in shooting down the child, or the redneck's decision to bring a girl home as a sex souvenir from the riot. Neither was acceptable.

He forced himself to stand. He couldn't run away from this, couldn't tell himself that this was someone else's problem. His games might have set this riot into motion, but he couldn't blame himself. He hadn't made the warders and their allies riot. They had decided to do it themselves. He had simply provided a pretext. Still, just because it wasn't his fault didn't mean that he wouldn't try to fix it.

In college, he had read about the Russian pogroms against the Jewish ghettos. At the time, he'd assured himself that those were ancient history, that contemporary America was far removed from that blot on humanity. He'd been wrong.

"That warder was just doing his job.” Arenesol fed Carl's own words back to him.

"And I'm going to do mine,” Carl replied.

He welcomed his body's shift back from human to wolf form. Joyed in the play of muscle and sinew, the heightened senses of smell and hearing.

"They'll shoot you down before you get within a hundred feet,” Mike warned him.

In his
Were
form, his mind was a little less logical, a bit more driven by emotion and primal needs. That didn't mean he was an idiot. Getting shot in the streets wouldn't do anything to avenge that poor elf-girl or end the warder injustices.

"Diversion.” His wolf vocal cords mangled the word, but Mike and Arenesol nodded their understanding.