In the Werewolf's Den (7 page)

Carl must have asked the question before thinking, because the answer was obvious. The pale face, lean body, and distinctive black outfit would have identified Mike as a Goth in an earlier decade. Today, it marked him as a vampire.

He wasn't especially tall—about three inches shorter than Carl, but his presence made him seem larger than he was. The accent wasn't Bella Lagosa Transylvania, but it was distinct. Possibly caused by enlarged canines.

"At your service,” the vampire told him. He bowed deeply to Danielle.

"Ms. Goodman and I will be interviewing each of you finalists together,” Carl told the remaining creatures. “There's coffee on the machine in the kitchen. Help yourself."

A couple of young dwarves got into a scuffle as they tried to head to the kitchen, their short bodies too broad to allow both of them through the door at once.

"Billy. Willie. Behave."

The vampire's voice was soft—hardly more than a whisper—but it cut through the sudden chatter and froze the two dwarves in place.

"Sorry, Dr. Harriman,” the vampire told him. “It's been a long day and coffee prices are through the roof here. I suppose you know that many dwarves have a serious coffee dependency."

Maybe Carl had known that but Danielle hadn't. There were so many different impairments that the warders had to specialize. She supposed dwarves had been covered in one of the overview classes but they weren't seen as a serious threat and she hadn't known anyone who had looked more deeply. And she'd already seen enough to know that the overview classes had left a lot out.

"If you'll follow me, Mike,” Carl said, “I think we can make this quick."

Mike moved with the easy grace of Fred Astaire from the ancient movies. When he smiled—which he did as Carl offered him his hand—his lengthened canines gleamed an ivory white.

"I'm going to be honest,” Carl told Mike. “I haven't heard much good about vampires. Ms. Goodman tells me that you're qualified and talented and I believe her. But I want you to tell me why I should hire you."

Mike's shrug was barely discernable. He was impossibly thin, but his clothes fit so well that it looked like a choice rather than the result of starvation.

"How long do you think your crew will last if they don't have someone like me to help?” Mike pulled up a chair and sat, his body almost gliding into the seat.

"I don't—"

"You're right. You don't know what it's like out in the zone. You've lived here for what, a couple of weeks? Secure behind your gates and fences. Almost a zone within the zone. But for the others, it won't be like that. They have to go home at night. They'll be sitting ducks for every gang out there."

Danielle had heard Mike's pitch earlier, but Carl seemed stunned. “Why should a gang bother with my workers?"

"Because they'll have money,” Danielle answered for Mike.

Carl held up a hand to forestall Danielle, but Mike went on ahead. “Warder Goodman is right, of course. In the zone, if you've got money, then you're a target. In our case, though, there is even more. Word is out about you, Dr. Harriman. Word that you've got a lab full of treasure—drugs, chemicals, food. Uh, blood. They'll pressure your poor workers, blackmail them to steal your materials, steal your research, even sabotage your work."

"And you can stop this."

Mike looked satisfied. “Oh, yes."

In the end, Carl hired the whole lot of them. Six outside workers, five lab assistants, and Mike.

"I'll shape them into the best mob in the Dallas zone,” Mike promised.

"We're not a mob. We're a laboratory team."

Mike nodded gravely but Danielle didn't need any special warder skills to know he was lying. Intentionally or not, Carl was assembling a mob and Danielle had helped.

She felt uncomfortable, torn between the very real dangers posed by the impaired and the importance of Carl's vision and of her mission. Carl had persuaded her that they needed a staff, and Mike the Vampire was dead-on that they needed to be able to defend what would be seen as an increasingly attractive asset. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

Danielle sent the two dwarves into far south Dallas looking for blood samples from the earliest of the affected. During the night, Carl had come up with the idea that those who were infected first might somehow be different—might, in fact, have been the elusive vectors of whatever virus or mutation had set off the return of magic. It didn't make a lot of sense to her, but then again, nobody had ever accused Danielle of being a scientist.

Rather than worry about that, or what he'd meant by the slip of his tongue when he'd called her ‘honey,’ she decided to ask Carl whether he was up for a run. Her cell vibrated just as she reached his lab door.

She suppressed the frisson of fear when she saw the calling number—the Dallas district Warder headquarters. Had they finally found out about her role in the riot?

"Goodman,” she said as she pressed the on button.

"Warder Goodman. You are directed to appear at the Dallas District Office, Warder Central at two o'clock today. If you have any questions, please press one. If you accept, please press two."

Warders who want to get ahead didn't have questions. That was lesson one in Warder school. Don't ask questions: follow orders. She pressed two and listened for the confirmation of her choice. Then she continued into the lab. The run was out but she needed to tell Carl he was on his own.

He was buried in his research. Five assistants scurried around, bringing him their work, looking for the next assignment, or trying to anticipate his next request.

She'd thought of Carl as an impaired, like millions of others. Occasionally, especially when she was sleeping, she would think of him as a male, superbly fit, good looking in a rough and masculine way. Naturally she tried to suppress those thoughts. As the rioters had pointed out, dating between normals and infected was simply not allowed. Forbidden by both law and the law of the mob. And her stepfather had cured her of any interest along those lines anyway.

The lab workers, and there were a couple of females along with the three males, thought of Carl as the next best thing to an Old Testament prophet. The reputation he'd made when he'd run his own company had grown in the telling, or maybe his warder dossier simply understated his importance in the field of biopharmaceutical research. For just a moment, she allowed herself to think about what might have been, if Carl hadn't become infected.

She shook her head. She never would have met him if he hadn't become
Were
and the responsibility of the warders. As a normal with a hundred million or so in the bank, he would have his choice of women.

Carl's smile raced her heart.

He dropped everything, making her realize that she hadn't been into the lab since they'd hired the assistants a couple of days before. Well, it wasn't as if she was going to do serious science.

"What's up, Danielle?"

With the call to Warder Regional fresh in her mind, she wondered how she'd let things get to a first-name basis. He might be a science genius, but he was still one of them. She almost reminded him to call her Agent Goodman but stopped short. Twenty seconds before, she'd been wondering if he'd call her honey again.

"I've got to head into town,” she told him. “Need anything from the north side of the pale?"

His forehead creased for a moment, then cleared. “I don't think so. The guys have an incredible talent for turning up just about anything."

This was a talent that she should technically report to her fellow warders. Danielle wouldn't bother, though. No warder would follow up on crimes against impaired. And she'd look like a rookie, not halfway ready for hunter work, if she reported every petty theft she ran across.

"Right. Don't know how long I'll be then. “Don't mess up.” She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked out. That awareness wasn't a surprise. Warder training made you aware of anyone looking at you—it could save your life. Still, Carl's gaze was hardly the stuff of threat—at least not threat in a violent sense. She knew his frankly male appraisal was disrespectful, an implicit statement that a normal might be interested in a
Were
. She couldn't decide whether she really minded.

Dallas's Warder District Office was the top half of the old Dallas Federal Building. Surrounded by acres of parking lots recalling the days when Dallas had been a commuter town filled with gas-guzzling cars, the building made up a non-distinctive part of the Dallas skyline.

How long had it been, she wondered, since Dallas, or any big city, had added another skyscraper? The return of magic had brought construction to a stop across America—maybe everywhere in the world. Not that anyone had much contact with the rest of the world any more. The return had destroyed whatever tourism industry was left after the bio-wars, so Danielle, like everyone else in the country below the senior diplomatic level, had only a vague idea what went on beyond the nation's borders.

She turned in her knives, her automatic (silver bullets and all), and her electronic pulser at the gate, keeping only the choke leash, which was truly part of her uniform.

A couple of security guards seemed interested in striking up a conversation, but abruptly went silent when they found she lived in the zone. Although there was no evidence to support the contagion theory, there wasn't much evidence to support any other theory of magic infection, either. So plenty of people, including most warders, figured that the less time spent with the impaired, the better. Another reason why herders, of all the warders, got the least respect.

With the delay at the gates, she'd had to hurry down the corridors to get to Joe Smealy's office on time but it turned out it wouldn't have mattered. She had to wait an hour outside his office, contemplating all of the trouble she was in if Warder Headquarters had found out about her role in the riots or in bending regulations to let Carl hire his assistants.

Joe Smealy finally opened his door and ushered her in. Joe hadn't aged at all since the day she'd met him—the day she'd discovered her mother's dead body. The then cop had taken a parental interest in the young orphan girl, encouraged her dreams of becoming a warder, and persuaded her to adopt the rigorous academy route rather than simply join as a patrol officer. More than anyone else, he was her mentor, the man she looked up to. When she was tempted to stray—tempted, for example, by a sexy werewolf—she relied on Joe's example to keep her straight.

Joe was living proof that medical science continued to progress. Danielle had done her research. She knew that he was a good fifty years old. But he could have passed for his late thirties.

He gripped her hand firmly and slapped her on the back, then led her to a small table.

Relief. He probably wouldn't greet her like this if he was going to ream her out.

"Sorry I didn't have more time when you arrived in Dallas,” he said. “Visitors from D.C., if you can believe it."

She nodded. “Yes, sir."

"But I wanted to welcome you to the region. I put in a special request for you, you know."

She made herself thank him although she almost wanted to spit. So Joe's request was why she had ended up a herder. Some friend.

"Hey, I know you had your heart set on being a hunter,” he said, his warder talents letting him picture her thoughts. “And that's going to happen as soon as I can work the angles. But Washington insisted on letting that werewolf go and,” he laughed shortly, “well, you know herders."

She shrugged. “It isn't exactly a prestige job.” Had he really said she was going to be a hunter?

He nodded seriously. “Damned right. Because nobody with balls, nobody with ambition, will volunteer to be tied down to a group of impaired. We all want to go where the action is, to fight crime and protect the people."

"Right."

"There are a couple of things, though.” Joe's voice sharpened.

"Sir?"

"The unscheduled riots last week are unfortunate. They aren't to be repeated."

She didn't ask what she was supposed to do about normals who crossed over the line looking for trouble.
Yes, sir
was the only possible answer—and she gave it.

"All right.” He nodded crisply. “We won't discuss that any further."

Thank goodness. She had a sneaking suspicion that he did know she was involved somehow and was giving her the only warning she was likely to get.

"Back to your current job. Dr. Harriman is important.” He lowered his voice. “Washington thinks that he might be able to come up with a cure to the return of magic. Not just an inoculation, but a full-fledged turn-the-disease-around cure."

Bad news. If Washington thought Carl was important, that meant that she'd be herding for a long time.

"That's what he claims,” she admitted.

"But what do you think?"

"Harriman is smart,” she said. “And he's committed."

Joe nodded. “Don't let him fool you, though, Danielle. Whatever else he is, he's impaired. They don't think the same as people, don't have the same loyalties."

He stood, closed his office door, and sat closer to Danielle, lowering his voice as if afraid of being overheard. “Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of capable herders here in Dallas. But I've been watching Harriman. He's smarter than any of them. A few weeks and he would co-opt them. I need someone in place who can see through the story he spins and,” his breath was hot in her face, “I need someone who won't hesitate to terminate him if that's needed for the people's safety."

Her face flushed at the compliment, but she knew she hadn't earned it. She knew Carl was smart, but she'd thought about it in terms of being a scientist. She hadn't really thought about how his intelligence meant he could manipulate people around him. Even trained people like Warders. Even suspicious people—like her. She'd tried to be careful, but Danielle was honest enough to face reality. At some level, Carl had gotten through to her. He had manipulated her. She'd been way too careless and if it hadn't been for Joe's warning, she wouldn't even know it.

She promised herself that she wouldn't let up her vigilance: that she'd live up to Joe's confidence in her.