Wolf: A Military P.A.C. Novel (22 page)

The man tensed up, took a step forward. Jared found himself pushed into the door, the steel unyielding, the bones and flesh of his back trying to mould to the flat surface. His feet dangled in the air. That just didn’t happen to him.

Ever.

“I’m . . . not . . . your enemy.” His voice choked out the words. Scott’s left hand around his throat made it difficult to talk.

“Are you Faelon’s?” Jared felt a knife pierce his clothing and slide against his Kevlar Jacket, then the pressure changed and the point was in place again.

“A knife won’t pierce . . .”

“Bet!” Michael knew that PAC could work his way through the cloth of the man’s vest. The knife would slide through flesh so easy.

Jared stilled. “I’m not Faelon’s enemy, either.”

“You took money.”

“I’m on retainer for Blackwater. I was a replacement for a casualty.”

“How many survived?”

“What?”

“I can smell the rot in the rooms below.” Jared felt the grip on his throat loosen. Air rushed into his lungs.

“It was only . . .”

“
. . . a few hours ago. I know. Inside.” He snarled the command out. Used to being obeyed. And Jared did. For more reasons than just the force being used on him. The man’s presence was powerful. If Gerund had been this powerful, Jared would have willingly followed him, even without the money.

Michael shoved Jared through the door
, and he stumbled down the first few steps. He hadn’t pushed him that hard, but then, he hadn’t known he had the strength to lift the man off his feet with one hand. Michael had always been strong. The endurance he had over the last few days had surprised him, but this kind of strength was a shock.

What else had Faelon given him?

The smell in the barracks was close, much too humid and warm; the scent of the dead rose up around him, clinging to the back of his throat. The blood was another matter. Like the rabbits he’d been eating, it quickened his metabolism, made him salivate. To his body, there was no difference other than the scent, and it was making him hungry. Was this how Faelon felt? Somehow, he didn’t think so. How many had she killed?

Michael noticed the blood
-encrusted wolf tracks.

Another memory surfaced. A tattoo. Michael remembered a child with a tattoo that was similar. But that was in the Oil Wars. The day Ahmed died. The day he lost his memory.

He could still smell the rich scent of Faelon. So close. But he had something else to take care of. “Show me.”

“Show you what, the bodies
? Why?”

He grabbed Jared and shook him with enough power to rattle his teeth. “Who survived?” Michael realized the danger here. He and Faelon had even discussed it in the cave where his horses had been attacked. Why wasn’t Michael a wolf?

Faelon had killed in the Johnston Valley. And not just killed. She had made sure her kills were dead, beyond reproach, with no way to heal from the properties of her saliva. Like he had.

“There were five, in the offices, three more in the gym. All dead. Gerund Hillman survived
, and the geek Harris. A copter took them out; they’ll be back after the storm.”

“Why them
?”

“Harris, she used him to warn everyone away from you, but he’s insane, no one will believe the story he’s putting out. He keeps raving about a woman changing into a wolf.”

“The other?”

“Hillman? He runs Blackwater, or he did. After the report I wrote
, he’ll be discredited.”

“Looking for advancement?” It was an opportunity for a takeover many men wouldn’t turn away.

“I retired. The bastard used me to force Faelon’s change. He was using shock therapy to interrogate her. She wouldn’t talk, so he pointed a gun at me.”

That meant he had seen her change. He was right though, who would believe this story?

“Did Hillman come close to dying?”

Jared raised an eyebrow at that, but he answered.
“No. She ripped the flesh from his forearm. He could have bled out, but it didn’t come to that.”

Michael released a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. No one here was going to come back from near death, the way he had. Faelon was safe, for the time being. She would only be truly safe if he killed Oberi. But, he had already made that decision when he had the man in his scope.

In the war, he had reacted to Ahmed’s death with blind instinct. And then he had acted out in rage, a pure blinding rage. He wasn’t that man anymore. No matter what the rage in his blood was telling him.

But he had to do something.

Michael’s fist moved too fast and with more power than he had intended. The crack of bone echoed in the chamber. A look of shock crossed Jared’s face as he fell to the concrete floor of the bunker, his nose broken. But he was unconscious, and that’s what Michael needed.

“PAC?” Michael walked through the base, searching for the things he would need.

“No guaranties it’ll work.”

“It worked on me.”

PAC went silent for a moment. “You didn’t want to remember. Ahmed and . . . I wanted to help. Didn’t want your pain . . .”

Michael
searched his memory, more and more was coming back to him. “I know that, PAC. Reprogram, Node One override. Don’t take my choices away again.”

“Reprogram complete. What about Jared?”

“That’s a safety concern. Can you imagine what the military would do if they had her or me. I can’t kill him though. His scent . . . he was telling the truth.”

The generator tha
t ran the bunker lost a battery to his searches. A small supply of renewable oil, and wire, several mattresses, and food was added to his list. Some of the food he packed away in the space left by what he’d already picked out of the saddlebags of his horse. He dragged the bodies into the gym, farthest from the barracks. Then he stacked the mattresses in the stairway, leaving two just outside the door of the bunker. He moved Jared to those two mattresses and crouched down near him. “Okay, PAC. Make it as permanent as you can. Four days should do it.”

Michael watched PAC extrude a number of filaments into Jared’s skin, knowing they would seep under his skull, intrude into his mind and his memory. And the chemicals there that would change what he saw.

His preparations finished, he left the bunker.

Faelon’s tracks were lost in the fresh snow. At the doorway, he could find them, a few centimetr
es under the white covering. Her musky forest scent and the metal of blood mingled, making his nostrils twitch with excitement. He lowered himself to the ground, getting as close as he could, close enough to get crystalline snow over his nose and lips. He licked the water away. Faelon wasn’t far ahead now. Nothing said she was dead, and the way she healed . . . her scent hadn’t given up any hint of disease that he could tell.

She was alive; he just had to find her. Now more than ever, he had to understand what was happening. Why he was changing so much?

He managed to keep her trail for a few kilometres in the blinding rage of the snowstorm. Searching the area didn’t help; the snow had piled up in the hours since she had left and fifteen centimetres more covered her trail.

Michael slumped into the snow, his pants soaking up water as he crouched there. His nose buried in the crystallized water, willing her scent to come to him.

It wasn’t there.

With nothing left to hold him, to keep him going, his body failed him. He had been pushing himself too far, and too hard, since he’d escaped White Bear.

“We need shelter, the cliffs to the right,” PAC said.

Michael didn’t answer but he moved, inched his arms forward to support himself as he brought his knees up. A boost of energy seared through his body. “PAC?”

“That won’t last long.” With his hands and the new motion-sensitive eyes he’d acquired from Faelon’s healing, he was able to pick out a change in the motion of the wind as it whistled in and out of a cave front. There were several of them here. He stumbled into the closest one, went as far as he could, and collapsed, curling up into himself. As the drugs PAC had given him wore off, and his capacity to build heat left him, he started to shiver. The ground shook. The Cold War Base. He pulled into himself even more, unaware that PAC had started healing his hand or that Faelon was just metres away from him in one of the other caves.

Node One: Name, PAC. Primary Interface: Captain Michael Scott: Adapting. Primary Systems: Nominal. Organics Engine: online.
Behaviour and Emotional files: Updating: Killing is an unwanted act. Defence requires an action. Threat assessment: Group one of Military mercenaries neutralized. Blackwater. Removal of defensive base. Removal of memories from surviving operative. Command Structure: Unchanged. Movement: vector analysis, wind, gravity, geological substructures. Environment: too cold for mortal man, stim on a stick! Temperature: Node One, 40.3 centigrade. Primary Interface Michael Scott: 40.3 centigrade. Secondary Interface Faelon: 40.3 centigrade.

Shield Parameters: replacing musculature structure in Primary. Source, Faelon. Analysis of Faelon’s muscle structure. Crystalline structure in cellular makeup: bone ash, quartz, sand. Minerals: cobalt, calcite, tourmaline, mica. Other
—Naklétso? The body has motion, a grace that transforms movement. Made in God’s image, male / female.

Wolf.

Medical Mode: parameters of Keloid removal and restructure of right hand now that the plant resins have been flushed from system. Primary interface transfused with GABA, base chemical for muscle suspension in a dreaming state. Dissolving Keloid tissue. Pain response high.

No help for it. I’m sorry.

Nerves fired for response stimulus. Replacing structure. Bridging nerve connections. Insufficient biological material. Seeding from source. Node One: Reprogramming. “Don’t take choices away.” Adding long range communication functions. Within Command functions.

Power low. Reserves depleted.

Consciousness failure.

Fuck
. . .

Chapter 42 Faelon

Faelon walked on four legs, trotting beside the two-legged man that was her father. He talked to her almost constantly, the growls all about the Yeii and the Navajo. The Way, whether it was Witchery or not, and how it all correlated to the world around her. Faelon knew he meant more than the mountains and forest that made up her home, but she didn’t understand it, not completely. She’d never seen his world. But it didn’t matter. His voice was soothing, the words no longer confusing in themselves, but she knew that much of his knowledge would need a physical counterpart before it became part of her. Today he told her about Mother. Not her bitch, but the other Mother, the one that was important to the Navajo people.

“This earth is our
Mother and is the place we first cry. Our first sounds are made upon her womb. We rest on her. We grow as she watches. The darkness covers us so we may rest. It’s here we make offerings. Both Mother Earth and the darkness have offerings. The sun that goes across the sky has an offering, so too does the moon. It shines a light for us. All things have an offering, they are the shield we use to live by.” He gathered his thoughts then and crouched down, taking her head in his strong hands and pierced her eyes, holding her as he spoke.” For every spirit captured with flesh, another is set free. Remember, daughter mine. It’s an exchange, not a sacrifice. It’s why the stories survive.”

Faelon woke and stretched out in the way of wolves, her tongue rolling in her mouth. Her belly rumbled. She needed food and the energy. As fast as she healed
, the bullets she had received yesterday took power from her. Only a few of the men had shown enough courage to attack her, but she had healed from the intermittent wounds. Though one bullet had stayed lodged in her longer than the rest. She could smell the metal it was made of, lying beside her, where her body had pushed it out.

A foreign object.

If her bitch had housed the Yeii, the way she and her sire did—that was a human regret. But she missed the soft wetness of her bitch’s nose as it pushed at her, caressed her. She put the emotion away. Today she was a wolf. She had other concerns. She was hungry and Michael was still out there.

She stood and shook, a ripple running across her fur. She padded across the cave floor, the debris and brush carted in by countless animals drift
ing along with her. More had fallen from the roof when the earth had shook last night. An avalanche or rock slide from the noise—more words PAC had supplied.

Outside, the weather had changed, settled from the storm of the previous day. Hunting would be easy today. Snow was piled high, unbroken anywhere near her. The wind blew from the north
; had it been blowing from the south she would have known Michael was near her. She loped out into the rocky hills, her nose questing, her ears up, alert for any hint of sound that prey would make. Far in the distance, she could see the mountain that had held her captor’s cave. She would stay wary for helicopters, and men, but she wouldn’t ignore an enemy.

An easy lope ate up three kilometr
es as she searched for spoor and found it: a deer, born last season.

When she found it, it was dead. The rock that killed it still lodged in its skull.

She looked up. Her hunt had carried her to the cave she had been held at, but now it was a ruin. The back of it had collapsed—the walls near the stairs had fallen and the area was open to the weather. Movement drew her eye. Her paw pads touching the ground quietly, jagged rocks littered the area, making her approach slower than she would have liked. When she was close enough, the motion she had seen—the man that had given her water. Buried in the same padding that had covered the steel bed in her cage. He was bound. Prey only, now.

She growled.

Jared reacted, turned awkwardly to see her. Faelon put her nose to the man. His sweat rose up from his skin. His heart raced, fear seeping from his scent. And under that—Faelon understood now. She put her nose to his bound hands, pried her teeth around his bindings. Jared tried to move, to run, but the shattered wall behind him stopped his movement. She bit down, her teeth and jaws grinding, working on the material. Her strength much more than a normal wolf. A metallic taste coated her tongue. The binding snapped.

That is for your kindness
, Jared Oberi, Faelon thought.

Fear had been the stronger smell, but
was covered by a scent much like a “gun,” and she could smell Jared’s confusion, and Michael. He was here. Had been. But she searched anyway. Her nose and eyes looking for him in the ruin of the cave but she could only go so far down the stairs before rock stopped her. She followed the scent back up, and near the blood that had marked her own exit from the building, she found his direction before it was lost in the snow. What she found though froze her muscles and raised the hackles on her back. The spirit of the Naklétso was too strong. The scent riding Michael the way it had with her the one time she had given into the rage of the animal.

The throp
. . . throp . . . of a helicopter sounded.

Faelon leapt from the fabricated stone all around her and buried herself in the snow, all but her eyes glaring from the natural blind. The copter approached, almost silent, but for the beat of the air under its spinning wings, like the seed of some trees. It landed in a storm of wind, as furious as last night
’s but centered in one place. The thrum of its wings slowed and halted. She watched Jared climb from the wreckage. He stopped before climbing into the machine and looked out over the landscape. His eyes seemed to find her, narrowed in to find her own.

She heard him speak then to
his rescuers. “I don’t know. There was . . . There was a wolf. Just now. And I . . . a not-cub.”

“What!” A shout over the wind.

“I don’t know,” Jared said. “I can’t remember anything else.”

Faelon ran as soon as the copter left the area. She ran as if her life depended on it. As if Michael’s life was in danger.

She followed his trail, lost it, and found it again, over and over. When she got to the cave that held the strongest spoor, she stopped. A growl erupted from her throat without her volition, instinctively. Those instincts warred with her. She had followed those drives when she had first met Michael and bonded with him—first, briefly, at the trap, and then in his cabin, fully. The same battle had raged in her, making her vulnerable and helpless to find a mate out of season.

To find any mate that would be worthy.

Those intuitions had displayed a new nature to her, told her she was as different as a wolf from a deer, as plants from snow. From human to Naklétso. But they had led her to Michael, to her being human, and now she had to listen to those human perceptions that had been buried for so long.

She stepped into the cave. Her growl rumbled in the confines of stone that held her future. The black wolf was here, but it was only her mate that shifted on the ground, his motion showing him waking from sleep, his eyes adjusting.

Faelon’s confusion grew. She edged closer.

“Faelon?” Michael said.

She sidestepped, searching for the other one. The space was empty. Nobody.

She slipped into her other self, her fur rippling to flesh. Her hair brushing her shoulders, her hands wrapping around dirt
from the cave floor. Her hips were high, ears back; she was as ready to flee as she was to attack.

“Michael is not Michael.”

“What? What do you mean?” Michael held his hand up. “You mean this?”

She could see PAC wrapped around it like fur, covering the fingers and wrist. Though not-cub had no smell,
nor a life force like her and Michael, she could sense his life. It trembled on the wind, as if he had hunted for days without prey, and now needed the rest.

Michael
stared at his hand. “PAC,” he whispered. He flexed his hand, closed it into a fist. Faelon saw a shiver run through him.

“The black wolf.” Her teeth snapped together.

“No,” he said, startled out of his reverie. You healed me!” he said. “The Shaman, White Bear Dying, he took me and . . . .”

She interrupted him, snapping out her words, almost a snarl. “Your scent.” Her outer hairs stood up, as if
goose bumps had run through her scalp.

She could see his brow crinkle up in thought, his eyes getting fierce.

“My . . . you mean I smell like . . .”

She could sense his fear, but his body contained it, held it in check.
Michael was alpha. Her alpha.

“Yes.”

“You thought I was . . .”

“Naklétso. No choice. No thought. Like black wolf.”

“You mean the rage? Is that why?” He reached out to touch her.

She shivered and backed up, one step
. That was all. But it was enough to stop Michael. “The cold doesn’t bother me. I’m hot all the time. And I eat as you do, rabbit fur on the inside, but I have choices. I won’t kill without reason.”

Only Michael knew those thoughts, those ideas
. Or not-cub. The Naklétso were savage. Full of rage, always wanting to control. Without her sire she would have succumbed. Faelon settled her instincts with a force of will. Is this what human meant? Would her reason, her instincts, and the Naklétso always run and snap at each other like this? She didn’t know, but she trusted herself. Right now, here. She trusted Michael. The gurgle that was laughter flowed from her throat. Elation ran through her. She dropped herself in Michael’s lap in one smooth motion.

“I almost died from his bites. I remember you standing over me. That’s why you killed the soldiers that way. So they wouldn’t come back from death. Wouldn
’t bring the Naklétso over with them.” He wrapped his strong arms around her waist.

“Talk in cave, with prey animal. Saliva heal
, but not make wolf.”

              He remembered something he had asked PAC when this first happened. “What about a compromised system?” Death was a compromised system, wasn’t it? That was twelve days ago, no, thirteen. Was that all? He played his hands over Faelon’s flesh, up her side, to the slim curves of her breasts. They were larger than he remembered. “Faelon you’re . . .”

“
. . . cubs, yes. Five.”

“My
God.” Faelon watched his eyes grow wide, and his scent changed. His teeth showed. Then he kissed her. Faelon wrapped her arms around her mate.

“How?”

She cocked her head at him. “Mate?”

“No, I mean how long?”

“Three moons.”

He wanted to hide her away in a cave for those three months. That wasn’t possible. Not here, not now. Even if they got away from all this, there was still the matter of who had poisoned him. It wasn’t the military. They had used
trancs that worked against PAC. Passive control. Blackwater had, at least. Mercenaries always had a client. Samantha’s soldiers had only done recon. And maybe taken the black wolf. God, what were they going to do with that kind of biology?

“White Bear, he thinks we’re shape shifters. He called us Yeenaaldlooshii. It’s the evil version of a Skinwalker. Someone like you.
”

She twisted her head, a look of confusion in her eyes.

“No, I don’t mean you’re evil.”

“What is evil?”

“Against God.”

“I know God.”

His eyebrows rose up.

Faelon knew it as surprise and wiped a hand over his face, smoothing the emotion from his skin.

“How?”

“Feel God in the earth. All over. Mother.” God was another word not-cub had told her about
, and once she understood it, she knew the meaning, like all wolves.

“Faelon?” He laughed suddenly. “God, I missed you
. . . The blood, you were hurt.”

“A tooth-spitter. Gun. Stupid.”

Michael ran his hands over her body, looking for wounds, knowing he wouldn’t find any, but he looked anyway. He couldn’t help himself. Faelon pushed her skin against his fingers, enhancing their touch. Her muscles twitching against him.

“Foreplay, Michael.”

He laughed again. “Now, Faelon?”

“Better than cheese.” She kissed him, fiercely, her skin flushing hot and warming the air between them.

Her amber-gold eyes fixed on his stone-brown orbs. As strong as the earth, they filled her awareness, taking their bond deeper than it had been. Michael quivered against her. She sighed, and kissed his face, his eyes.

“We have enemies, Faelon. Hillman and Harris. The army, two different factions, and even my father, I think.”

“Sire looks like enemy while he teaches cub to fight.”

“How did
. . . ?” She didn’t. Michael understood though, a wolf sire teaches his cubs to fight; he plays the predator for a time to teach lessons. Michael and his father had bonded that way in response to how his mother had died. It had probably saved each of them.

“And White Bear?” Faelon said.

“Yes.”

A roar filled the entrance to the cave, deafening the sensitive ears of both of them, but Faelon was moving already, shifting so fast, enough to be at the entrance of the cave as the bear attacked. She lunged at it, snapping her teeth, closing ivory on soft flesh.