The Bureau (A Cage for Men and Wolves Book 1) (2 page)

She’d read the article a dozen times, but her eyes still skimmed the words out of habit.

"Charles Elliot Montgomery IV, next in line to lead the Bureau toward its goal of total werewolf containment, made his debut at a press conference late last week. Like his father, and grandfather before him, Mr. Montgomery will carry on the prestigious leadership laid down by his great-grandfather, Charles Montgomery Sr., original founder of the Bureau.

              'While I could never hope to be as great a man as my grandfather,' a humbled Mr. Montgomery said to reporters, 'my family's tradition of assuming command is one that has not failed the Bureau, nor those who rely on us to keep them safe from the monsters that still terrorize us.'"

Clover stopped reading, the rest of the article descending into a stream of gossip. The Bureau's drama about succession didn't interest her. It was little Montgomery Jr. that did. She'd felt it the moment she'd seen his photo lining the sidewalks of her usual beat. She could see the weakness behind his stone-calm expression, and she knew he was her key to getting inside the Bureau.

A door a few yards away from her scraped across the ground, and Clover jammed the still-wet article back into her pocket. Before she’d even managed to stand up, a girl emerged from the doorway, backlit by the florescent lights of the kitchen. It was Hannah Pritchard, the girl Clover had come into the city to see. She was tall and blonde, with the sorts of curves human women spent hundreds of dollars to fabricate. Hannah’s were natural and had always made Clover’s athletic body look boyish in comparison.

“You’re looking well.” Clover tried to smile where she was still crouched against the brick wall. It wasn’t a lie—the other girl had filled out since she’d been picked up by the Bureau and sold off to the wealthy family that ran the French restaurant she was camped outside of—but Clover could still hear the resentment in her own voice.

It had been a gamble to wait for her outside her master’s restaurant, but she’d hoped Hannah would be there for early morning preparations, and her hunch had paid off this time.

“What are you doing?” Hannah’s voice was a harsh whisper as she hurried to ease the door shut behind her. “We were supposed to meet last night.”

“I got side tracked,” she half-lied. “But I’m here now. Do you still have the stuff I asked for?”

“Side tracked with agents?”

Clover shrugged, her throat too constricted to answer this time.

“You look
horrible
. Clover, are you sure you’re alright? Were you chased?” Hannah looked even paler as the artificial light of the kitchen was blocked out by the door. She wore the tan and orange uniform of an indentured werewolf—a knee length skirt and simple, long sleeve button-up. Every seam banded in an orange, reflective material that glowed like street signs in the dark, making them easy to spot, even with the weakest of flashlights. Despite all that, she made it look sophisticated. The blouse cinched around her narrow waist, only accentuating her body shape more.

“Oh, please.” Clover finally stood up, pretending that she’d only been crouching like that to look cool. “It’s not like I can’t handle a little chase. Do I
look
like the type of person to get caught by the Bureau?” The moment the words were out, Clover realized how insulting they’d been.

The Pritchards—Hannah’s family—were well established in her pack, going back several generations the way Clover’s did, but the two girls had never been very close. Growing up, Hannah complained that Clover was too rough, too rude. Clover thought the other girl was boring and overly sensitive. She was the sweet and helpless type. Blonde, pretty, good with children and with the elderly. Spent time with the sick. Soft-spoken. She was the one all the little girls in their pack looked up to, strived to be like—she was the pack’s golden child.

Then Hannah had been picked up by the Bureau. And the finger-pointing had started.

“You know what I mean.” Clover’s attempt to apologize for the insensitive joke was weak, but Hannah, in her own sweet way, only offered her a sympathetic smile. “Anyway, I have your letters.” Clover fished the sopping wads of paper out of her bag. Paper was hard enough to come by in her pack, let alone envelopes, so everything was scribbled on scraps—newspaper clippings, the backs of documents businessmen had thrown away, flyers—and folded as neatly as the medium would allow. Even wet, even crumpled, Hannah accepted them graciously.

“Wait out here a minute and I’ll get mine.” She disappeared back inside the restaurant, and Clover slumped against the wall again.

The other girl really did look good. She was healthy, glowing even, as cliché as that seemed. She met with Hannah once every week, late at night, in a park near her new master’s house. Clover brought letters from her family and friends to her and Hannah exchanged them for her own. She had become nothing more than a courier. It wouldn’t hurt so much if the pack were just as willing to break the rules for other members who had been taken as they were for Hannah.

The pack had rules.

Important rules.

And rule number one was that if you’re taken by the Bureau, you stop existing. There was a bit of literal truth to that, since the majority of werewolves picked up by the Bureau were never heard from again. Everyone knew they were dead. The Bureau only sold those who were mild enough, young enough,
pretty
enough to make good slaves. But whether you were led to the sales floor or the slaughterhouse, you stopped existing to the pack. No one tried to save you. No one tried to contact you.

Unless you were Hannah Pritchard.

The light from the kitchen washed the alley again as Hannah returned, one hand full of posh stationary, the other carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Tucked under her arm was a baguette. Clover took the letters first, stuffing them into her still-soggy bag. She ignored the bread, despite the hungry twisting in her stomach and took the parcel in both hands. The weight of it thrilled her, and made her forget about the smell of the bread for a moment.

“Is this it? Is it everything?” She squeezed the wrapping, trying to gauge the weight and firmness of the thing.

“Yes, but—” She held the bread in both hands now, her pretty face darkening. “Clover, you’ve been acting weird lately. I’m worried. I know you’re upset about your family, but the things you’re asking for…you’re not planning anything dangerous, are you?”

Clover squeezed the package against her stomach, hating to hear Hannah mention her family at all. Living such a posh lifestyle, Hannah hardly seemed sad about what had happened to herself, let alone what happened to Clover’s parents. Her siblings. She didn’t understand the anguish of the people she’d left behind, or of those who were left behind by others.

“Why would I be planning anything dangerous? Even if I wanted to do something crazy, Byron would never let me, right?”

“Well, that’s true. But he’s letting you meet with me, so I thought, maybe—”

“He’s only doing that because it’s you.” There was a beat of silence between them, and Clover got the impression that maybe, just maybe, Hannah was aware of the special treatment she got. “How’s the young master?” Hopefully a change of subject would keep Clover from feeling guilty about the frown marring the other girl’s face.

“He’s alright,” she said before touching the collarbone just visible through the drape of her uniform. “He gave me this beautiful necklace as a gift the other day.”

Clover’s eyes passed over the arc of gold resting over her sternum—a crescent moon, like some stupid reminder that both she and Hannah were tied to the wicked ball of rock. It was like giving a crutch-shaped pendant to an amputee. It was offensive, whether Hannah realized it or not.

“It’s beautiful.” Clover tried to not mean it, but it
was
beautiful. It was delicate, trendy and trafficable. Just like Hannah was. She, just like that necklace, was the sort of possession that screamed
status.
“You’re lucky he likes you so much.”

Hannah’s tiny smile made it obvious that she liked him just as much, but they avoided talking about Callum, her owner’s teenaged son. When Hannah had first told her that she’d fallen for the boy, Clover’s response had not been good. It had been loud, angry, and very nearly violent. She asked about him sometimes as a way of apologizing, but she still hated him—still hated the idea of it. Anyone who fell for a human, especially a human who
owned
you, was a traitor.

“You know, Clover, I’ve been thinking.” Her hands turned the bread over and over as she paused to find the right words. “I feel like I’ve become pretty close with my new family. And I thought that maybe I could ask for some provisions to send back with you some time.”

Clover’s fist was full of the other girls blouse before she realized she’d snatched her up. The bread toppled onto the ground between them.

“Are you stupid?” Clover tried to keep her voice down, not wanting to alert the other workers inside the restaurant, or the pedestrians on the nearby sidewalk. “I don’t care how much you like your new
family.
” The word oozed off her lips like poison. “Don’t you dare tell them about us.”

“But they could help.” Hannah stumbled as she was yanked closer. "They're good people."

"They're not," Clover spit. "If they were good people, they wouldn't have a
slave!
You're their property, not their
daughter
! They don’t give a shit about you, Hannah. And if you say a word to them about us I’ll drop your market value myself, you understand me?”

The light hanging over the restaurant’s entrance caught the tears in Hannah’s eyes and Clover released her. She’d not meant to go that far, but she was already breaking so many rules. Why did she get away with it, while Clover was left to sneak around in the shadows to avoid excommunication? The blonde girl staggered away from her, watching her like she’d been the one who was just betrayed. Like it hadn’t been the other way around.

“Don’t say anything,” Clover said again, much softer this time. “I’ll see you next week.”

Of course, Clover was lying. She had the package she needed from Hannah, which meant she could move on to the next stage in her plan. Whether the pack okayed it or not, Clover would get her family back.

To her credit, Hannah held her crying in check until she was back inside the restaurant. But she’d not said goodbye, and Clover didn’t bother to either. In the dark wash of the alley, Clover stooped down, collected the loaf of bread from the ground, and started the long walk back to her pack’s den.

- 04 -

The briny smell of the culvert beneath the boatyard and dry-docks soothed the tension that had grown inside Clover during her walk home. It had been a relief when she'd peeled the chain-link fencing away from the wide storm drain that emptied the runoff from the city into the bay. The tunnel was wide and generally overlooked since the trek down the steep, broken concrete to get to it was treacherous. City workers usually just glanced at it and assumed that the fencing which had once been set firm into the cement wall was secure. Clover and her pack did everything they could to keep that illusion intact. It was the only way in or out of their makeshift home, and if agents found the entrance, it was only a matter of time before they found the den.

Clover pulled the fencing firm against the wet stone, the smell of low tide mixing with the mildew and the stink of refuse that sometimes washed through the culvert. It wasn't a good smell, but it was a comforting one. The sound of the cranes and loading equipment above her drown out any noise the fence might have made, so she wasn't gentle as she fastened the ropes they used to keep the fencing in place.

Inside the culvert was the only entrance—or exit for that matter—to her pack's home. A rusted ladder hung from the ceiling of the domed tunnel, and at the top was a manhole that would take her up into the harbor—into the stacks of old freight cars that had been connected to each other by makeshift doorways. It was a honeycomb of rusted metal and cramped compartments.

No one really remembered how the stacks of old freight cars became their sanctuary, but there were rumors. The consensus was that, several generations back, the dock owner had a son infected by a renegade werewolf. The stories suggested he was disgusted by his boy's treatment at the hands of the Bureau, and as retaliation he set a section of his harbor aside for homeless werewolves. No one was sure how true the story was, but the "Do Not Enter" sign on the barbed fence that surrounded their rundown corner of the world had stayed up, and even the workers steered clear of the rusty towers.

Clover's icy fingers wrapped around the rungs of the entry ladder and she settled her expression into one of complete disinterest. She couldn't let her packmates know that she'd been chased by agents, or that she was smuggling her new parcel. She crawled through the small hatch that led into the lowest level of the freight car tower and the warmth blurred her memories of the sewer.

The thin sheet metal that made up the walls and floor was covered by blankets that had been found, bartered for, or stolen by various pack members, giving the cramped space a tent-like feel.

Caleb and Joshua, brothers in their late twenties and early thirties respectively, sat by a space heater, keeping watch over the main entrance. Even with Joshua's seven-year-old daughter, Heather, in his lap, they both held weapons. The regulations that had been placed on firearms made their procurement nearly impossible, even on the black market, so one held a steel pipe and the other a chiseled hammer. Crude weapons like these were usually the only choice.