by Geonn Cannon
"Barry?"
He pushed the door open with his elbow.
"The van that was waiting outside. Were there any identifying marks?"
"It was just a normal van." He thought for a second. "Oh. There was a thing on the side. Like they'd tried to paint over something but it was still visible. It was a... uh." He closed his eyes and held up one hand as if he was drawing it. "Like a bird coming out of an egg."
Dale pictured the image. There was something familiar about it. "Bird coming out of..." Her eyes widened. "Could it have been a dragon with its wings around the sun?"
"I guess. Yeah, it had big wings, so yeah. That makes more sense."
Dale grinned. "That's the logo of a local pharmaceutical company. One of three in town that has the ability to manufacture wolfsbane in large amounts."
"Hope so. Ever since Ariadne started talking about that stuff, people have been afraid to come here. I mean, this is a bar for canidae and run by canidae, and they still don't feel safe. I guess after this morning I guess they have a point."
"No, they don't," Dale said softly. "Ari loves this place. Everyone needs somewhere they can go without worrying about what they are."
Barry stared at her for a second and then smiled. "Huh. I guess you're not like those hoods. You really care about Ariadne."
"I love her. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with her."
"But you're..."
"Human, human, human, I know. That doesn't matter."
Barry said, "For most of us, it would be. You must have a special one."
"I do." She pushed her hand through her hair and exhaled. "I could spend all day scrubbing in here and I still wouldn't feel confident telling you to come back in. I'd tell you to call a cleaning crew, but then you run the risk of them being hunters and having them make the problem worse."
"You've wetted down the places where you saw the stuff, right? We'll take precautions and vacuum up the rest. If you think you have a lead on where they're making wolfsbane, you should go. We'll finish up here."
"Nope," Dale said. "I'm not letting you guys anywhere near this junk. Besides, I can't do much spying while the sun is still up. Now, you said something about a vacuum...?"
Chapter Five
Jacqueline Ramsey lived in an apartment downtown, and Ari took the opportunity to stop by the office to tell Dale what happened. Unfortunately the office was locked and dark. She checked her phone and found she'd missed a text. "Bull&Terrier infected w/ wolfsbane. Checking it out, sniffing for clues like my mentor. Remember, you have food at my place. -D"
Ari replied with a warning to be safe and stopped by Dale's apartment to pick up something for lunch on her way to Jacqueline's building. The huntress lived near Lake Union, and despite the weather Ari saw a few sailboats out on the surface of the lake. She parked down the street and unwrapped her sandwich, eating with one hand while she skimmed Jacqueline's phone with the other. The contacts list was full of code names - Woden, Low Key, Neith, Jupiter, Sedna, and Orion - along with a few real names.
Her daily reports were usually no more than a few abrupt sentences - "no sign of agrsn, dose upped slightly" - and were always sent within a few minutes of six o'clock and were always sent to the number assigned to someone called Bendis. She prepared the text she was going to send in order to keep the watchers from descending on the Ahearn house. "L dead; S out of reach w/ children until further notice." After a moment she added, "Will follow S overseas to continue dosing." With any luck that would keep anyone from asking why their operative had suddenly dropped off the face of the earth.
When she finished eating she took Jacqueline's keys and approached the building from the south. The lobby was empty so she found the elevators and rode to the third floor without being forced to explain her presence. She didn't know what she expected to find in the apartment, but the chance to root through a hunter's home was too intriguing to pass up. She let herself into the apartment and locked the door behind her.
She had to admit she'd half-expected to find an armory with guns propped up against the furniture and ammo scattered across the kitchen counter. Instead she was faced with an extraordinarily normal home. Four or five business suits hung in dry-cleaner bags on the hall closet, the trash was full but not alarmingly so, and she'd left her dishes from breakfast on the coffee table. There was a laptop on the couch and Ari opened it to be immediately stymied by a password request.
The closet revealed luggage with airline tags still attached to the handle. Jacqueline had flown into town from New York two months earlier, not long before she started working for the Ahearns. Ari carefully went through the bag and found a half dozen small bottles of spices that she could tell were really filled with wolfsbane just by looking at it. She put them aside until she could dispose of them in a safe manner. She was putting the bag back into the closet when her phone rang. She checked and saw Lorne's number on the display and prepared herself before she answered.
"Hey." She made herself sound out of breath, moving into the living room to pace in a circle. "I just left the Ahearn place."
"Oh," he said, a little thrown by her starting the conversation. "What did you find?"
"Nothing. No wife, no kids. But I did find something interesting... apparently the family had a personal assistant. Jacqueline Ramsey? She's missing, too."
"Did you say Ramsey?"
"Yeah. Why, you know her?"
"She's a huntress. I didn't know her personally, but I knew she was in town. She's missing?"
Ari said, "Yeah. Seems like they left in a pretty big hurry."
Lorne thought for a long time before he spoke. "Could be she found out what happened to her husband and decided to get while the getting's good. We've been hearing rumors about the wolves picking up on our presence here. Someone's been sloppy. The guy who trained me said it was going to be a good week or so before they got wise to us. Maybe we weren't giving the animals enough credit."
Ari looked out the window, glad that her warnings were throwing a wrench in their plans. "They didn't survive this long by being stupid," she reminded him as she looked out at the lake.
"Yeah, well, neither did we. We're hunters. We've been training for this day for two hundred years. Now's our chance to prove it wasn't just time well wasted."
"What's our next move?"
"Well, that's what I was calling to talk to you about. A couple of our boys were tasked with booby-trapping a wolf bar this morning, but the assholes got themselves spotted. They called asking for advice and I told them to hang tight. We're waiting to see if the wolves are smart enough to track us down with the info they got and, if they are, we're going to set a trap for them."
Ari struggled to control her breathing. The bar had to be Bull and Terrier, and Dale was the one who would be following the trail of any clues they found.
"So what do you say, Willow? Want to set a trap and catch ourselves a wolf?"
#
Dale was on her hands and knees with a flashlight so she could make sure there wasn't any wolfsbane in the vents, poised to be ejected into the air as soon as the heater clicked on. Someone had gone down the street to a construction site to borrow a respirator and Milhous donned it to help her with the cleanup without risking infection. The downside was that when he spoke the filters made him sound like Bane from the most recent Batman movie, and Dale had to strain to understand him. While she was crawling around the vents, he was behind the bar checking the glasses and fixtures.
"Sorry ‘bout the whole hood thing," he said. "We don't get many non-canidae here, and the ones we do get usually have the red hair thing going on so we know what they're after."
"I hope you haven't been admitting many of them lately. Hunters can have red hair, too."
"Oh, we know. Ariadne made sure we were duly warned. That girl of yours has been like a dervish this past month or so."
Dale frowned, certain the mask had garbled his word. "Like a what?"
"Dervish. Whirling dervish. It's an I
slamic order..." He waved off the explanation. "Tasmanian devil. That's a better comparison. Running around, making sure we all know what's going on, warning everybody to be careful."
"Oh. Well, I guess Taz is better than Chicken Little crying about the sky falling."
Milhous said, "A lot of us owe our lives to her, you know. We've been on alert, watching our backs. Hard to say how many lives she's saved, but this whole wolf manoth thing would be a lot bloodier without her sending up the flare."
Dale smiled proudly. "I'll be sure to let her know she's a hero of the canidae community."
"Can I ask how you two even got together? Most of us shy away from... I mean, usually it's just easier to find another canidae."
Dale sighed. Apparently the more people learned she was with Ari, the more they would be touted as poster girls for interspecies relationships. "I saved her from a group of jerk-ass kids when she was in wolf form. Took her home, she changed into a person, crawled into bed with me, and the shock of having a naked stranger in my bed trumped the whole ‘werewolf' thing." She winced. "Sorry. I've been trying not to say that word."
"What, werewolf? We say it all the time. Even if you're just a dawg like me. It's not pejorative."
"Sure feels like it when I hear a hunter say it."
Milhous shrugged. "Well, sure, people who hate us can make anything sound like an insult."
"Is that like telling people it's okay for me to say ‘wolf' because I have wolf friends?"
"Maybe not exactly," he chuckled. "But similar."
Dale was about to respond when her phone buzzed. She checked the display and smiled. "Speak of the devil. Hey, Ari. I was just talking about you with Milhous."
"You're still at the Bull and Terrier?"
Dale stood up. There was an unsettling hint of panic in Ari's voice. "Yeah. I wanted to help make sure the barroom was clear of wolfsbane so they wouldn't have to risk themselves. What's up?"
"The guys who were sabotaging the bar told someone they had been spotted. The hunters are waiting to see if anyone from the bar tracks down the truck and follows them."
"Damn. Lorne's seen me. If I show up following the truck, he'll wonder why I'm helping a canidae bar."
"Well," Ari said, "yeah, that too. But he's setting a trap for you, Dale. Promise me you won't go anywhere near that truck or wherever it leads."
Dale said, "Who is the alternative, you? It'll be bad if Lorne finds out I'm looking into it, but it'll be impossible to explain if he catches you."
"Did the truck give you any leads?"
"Don't ignore the question, Ariadne. You're working with Lorne, and I'll find a way to investigate without him catching me. Thank you for the warning, but now that you've told me they're setting a trap I can prepare for it."
Ari sighed, "Dale, don't take a stand on this."
Dale glanced at Milhous, who had his back to her so he could studiously check the wall for signs of wolfsbane. "I'm taking the risk for you, Ari. Keep your cover, work with Lorne, and I'll do what I can to stay safe. But I will investigate that truck, because it could lead me to the place where the wolfsbane is being manufactured. I'm not going to just hand that off to someone else because it's not safe. And I'm not sending another canidae into a place that might be full of wolfsbane. You do your job and I'll do mine."
"This isn't your job," Ari snapped. "You're just my secretary, you sit behind a desk all day and type up my reports, you don't go out and--"
"Goodbye, Ariadne." Dale disconnected the call with a fierce jab, stuffed her phone into her pocket, and looked at Milhous again. She could feel her blood rising and knew her face was as red as her hair. Milhous finally risked looking at her and she said, "What?"
"Oh, I forgot you were here. I completely spaced out and didn't hear a thing."
"Good." Her anger ebbed, replaced by a sharp twist in her chest. She knew Ari would only have said something so horrible in order to protect her, but it was still a lousy thing to do. A cheap shot to someone who had taken pride in how integral she had become to Ari's agency. To hear the woman she loved call her ‘just a secretary' had been the same as being slapped across the face. She felt tears stinging her ears as she turned to examine the room again.
Milhous cleared her throat. "May I say something?"
"Fine."
"Anyone who doubts how real your feelings for that wolf are? They wouldn't doubt it now. You don't get that mad if you don't care."
Dale chuckled and wiped the corner of her eye. "Shut up and help me look for more wolfsbane."
#
Ari crossed her arms over the steering wheel and rested her head against them. She was glad Dale had hung up, her only regret being she hadn't done it a few seconds earlier so she wouldn't have heard that hateful tripe falling out of her girlfriend's mouth. In the moment she'd thought it was a necessary length to make Dale see the smart thing to do was step back and let someone else deal with the dangerous stuff. It wasn't because she doubted Dale's capability, it was because she wanted to know Dale was safely back at the office and risking nothing worse than a paper cut. In trying to make that happen, she'd insulted her horribly.
"Slick," she whispered as she leaned back in her seat. "Real slick, Ariadne." She wiped at her cheeks, looked at the clock, and started the car. Lorne wanted her to meet him at the police department so they could arrange their next move. She calmed her emotions during the drive, not wanting to explain why her eyes were red when she showed up. She parked outside the building and took out her phone. She knew if she called, Dale would just send her to voicemail - rightly so - and sent her a text instead.
"Dale. I'm sorry for lying about how important you are. I just wanted to keep you safe. I love you. You're not ‘just' anything to me. Ariadne."
She sent it, returned the phone to her pocket, and got out of the car. Lorne was waiting for her in the lobby, forcing her to appear nonchalant as she approached.
"Are you trying to keep me from snooping in your desk, Detective?"
"I've learned to be careful around private dicks like you," he said. "Come on. We have to go make sure the wolves aren't sniffing around the company."
"Which company?"
He led her back outside. "The Orarian Group. We have some people in their research and development lab, and they're the ones who have been churning out wolfsbane for us. The wolves spotted a van with the logo, so we're going to stake the place out to see if they show up."
"They'd have to be pretty stupid to attack a place they know is full of wolfsbane."
They reached his car. "You've never heard of suicide bombers, kamikaze attacks? For all we know they want to get dosed while they're inside. Go berserk, kill our lab geeks, cut off production that way. We're not going to let them."
Ari got into the passenger seat. "What's the plan?"
"We wait until they go in, then we grab them. Take them somewhere nice and quiet and get them to ID some of their friends. That way we don't have to spread the ‘bane around and hope we get lucky. We can just target them straight out." He grinned. "And we can make sure there are some hunters nearby when the wolves go rabid."
"Hm. Lorne, you have to..." She pressed her lips together and tried to think of the right approach. "Regardless of whatever else is going on, the whole wolf manoth thing... do you ever stop to think that what we're doing is insane? We're drugging people, real people, and making them do things they would never do otherwise. And we're killing them for it. Why? Just because this is what our great-great-great-grandparents did way back in the Dark Ages?"
Lorne stopped at a light and drummed his fingers on the wheel. "You ever run into any wolves? Seen what they're like when it isn't wolf manoth?"
"No."
"I have. When I was a kid, my mother hated what my dad was teaching me. She told him I was just a boy, didn't need to know self-defense. We would go out into the woods every weekend, sometimes in the backyard, and we'd practice. He taught me how to shoot, how to take care of my guns. The whole time Mom w
as trying to impart culture on me. She gave me this book about how the hunters and the wolves came to an understanding because in the 1800s because some huntress screwed a wolf. What kind of sick mother reads her kid something like that? Bestiality is an okay bedtime story now?"
Ari's mother had read her that story, the true history of Johanna Brion and Agatha Westreich, and she'd only recently discovered it was all true. She remained silent, however, as Lorne continued toward the drug company.
"One summer we went camping in the Cascades. Dad said I was finally old enough to kill one for myself, so a couple of his pals found one. Took it up into the woods and held it until we were ready. It was my first hunt. Dad let it go, and it took off running. I went after it, but there was no way I could keep up. It got away from me. I searched the woods for hours, even after Dad told me I might as well give up, and we went home.
"A few days later I came home from my friend's house and found the door had been kicked in. Dad wasn't home, but Mom was. Fucking wolf tracked us down, broke into our home, and killed her. Tore her to damn pieces." His voice had grown so soft Ari could barely hear it. "Thing was long gone by the time I got there, and I wasted a lot of time holding her hand, crying, trying not to believe it. When Dad got home, he told me it was my fault for letting it go. Told me I had to avenge Mom's death before he called me his son again."
Ari fought down her nausea. "Did you find it?"
He shook his head. "No way to know. Wolves all look alike to me. Dad passed away a few years ago. He was still blaming me for what happened. But I promised him I'd take out every wolf that crossed my path. When I found out wolf manoth was coming back, I knew it was my destiny. I was supposed to be here, hunting those wolves, killing them for... not for my mother, but for whoever's mother they killed. The kids they killed."