Dogs of War

by Geonn Cannon

  "Oh. That."

  "What did you think I meant? Oh. The kiss? Yeah, that was nothing."

  "Gee, thanks."

  Milo chuckled. "You know what I mean. You thought I was Ariadne. No problem."

  Dale twisted in her seat to face Milo. "Which brings us back to the question you avoided answering. What are you doing back here? I thought you went back to England weeks ago."

  "I did. My friends were there, and I wanted to gear up with them to deal with wolf manoth on my own turf. Got there, filled them in about everything that was happening, and we braced ourselves for a flood of hunters. But the flood never came. They were all coming here."

  "To Seattle?"

  "To the whole Pacific Northwest. Ariadne's mum tracked down cabals in Oregon, Idaho, up in Canada... loads of wolves up in Canada. Hunters decided to come where they had the most chance to spread out and the lushest hunting grounds. There are some making trouble over in Germany and Eastern Europe, but the big show? Nah, the big show is happening right here. So Gwen brought us back."

  "Us?"

  Milo nodded. "A couple of my mates came with me. We've been helping to spread the word on wolfsbane."

  "So what were you doing here? Not that I'm anything but grateful you were around."

  "Yeah. Um." She looked down at her hands. "Gwen sort of... asked me to keep an eye on you."

  Dale stared. "Me? Why?"

  "Because canidae are pissed off. Some of them are taking the news of wolfsbane as a warning, and they're keeping their heads down. Others aren't quite so pacifistic. The way they see it, humans are declaring war on us, and we're not going to just take it lying down. Hunters are going after every wolf they find, so now some canidae have decided that all humans are fair game. Wolf manoth is turning into an all-out war. Ari's mum didn't want you to be a casualty."

  Dale sagged back into her seat. "Damn. I can't believe we're only two days into this stupid month. I feel like everything is just..." She closed her eyes. "The stress is getting to her. She's trying to hide it, but I can tell. She snapped at me earlier, and if she has to go through another four weeks of this I'm afraid she'll crash and burn."

  "Need a plane ticket out of here?"

  "Where would we go?"

  "Somewhere hunters won't be looking for you. Mexico, maybe. You'd have to deal with a couple of coyotes, but at least they're not wankers with automatic weapons and biological weapons."

  Dale chuckled. "Ari would never go for it. The offer is sweet, though." She took a breath, held it, and let it go slowly. "Don't take it off the table, though. If I change my mind in a few days, I want to be able to toss Ari on a plane whether she's willing or not."

  "Done and done."

  Dale turned and settled in the seat again. "And I guess since I know you're here, we can at least be sociable. Ari and I have some safe food back at our apartment. It's not much..."

  Milo shook her head. "Gwen's got us all sorted. Thanks though. How about you? Feel like meeting the troops? A couple of ‘em are really interesting in meeting you."

  "Sure," Dale said. "Sounds like fun. And it'll be nice to be surrounded by canidae I can trust if it's open season on humans. On the way I'll fill you in about why Ari's hanging out with a hunter."

  Milo said, "Not necessary."

  "You're following her, too? I don't know if that's safe, what with Lorne being a detective. He could spot you."

  "Oh. No, we're not following her. It's just that Gwen's been filling us in."

  Dale frowned as she pulled away from the curb. "Wait. How does Gwen know what Ari's up to?"

  "Ari's been keeping her informed."

  Dale focused on the street ahead. "For how long?"

  Milo became very still, then hung her head. "Shite. Look, if she didn't bring it up..."

  "How long?"

  Milo sighed. "Gwen said it had been a few weeks."

  Dale tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "Huh."

  "I'm sure--"

  "Milo, do me a favor and don't say anything else unless it's to give me directions. Can you do that for me right now?"

  After a few seconds Milo pointed. "Turn left up here."

  Dale nodded. "Thanks."

  #

  Ari and Lorne stayed at McGraw Square until a squad car pulled up to take over surveillance. They had called Orarian to let them know they had reason to believe someone was intent on sabotaging a shipment of their drugs. Security had been beefed up, and the wolfsbane was set to be moved at six-thirty. It gave Ari plenty of time to run by the office and hopefully catch up with Dale. There was still no reply to the apology text, and she felt enough time had passed that the apology had to be given in person. Lorne offered to swing her by and wait for her, but she refused as politely as she could. He took her back to her car and she drove the short distance to her office.

  Her hopes of reconciliation were immediately dashed when she saw the office lights were off. She unlocked the door and went into her office, unloading the items she had taken from Jacqueline Ramsey. She kept the phone so she could send the progress report at six, but the packet of wolfsbane went into an empty tea tin and into the wall safe. She didn't want to risk spilling even a particle of it in the office. Once she'd relieved herself of the incriminating evidence, she used the bathroom. When she was finished she stood in front of the mirror and lifted her shirt to see if her brawl with Jacqueline and Serena had left any bruises. Her entire left side was sore, and she could feel her right ankle beginning to protest at being used too much, but for the most part she had survived intact. Her collar didn't have any evidence of Serena's bite, for which she was immensely grateful.

  She put her shirt back on and went out to the front office. The streetlight shone through the glass and illuminated the Bitches Investigation printed on the glass.

  Just a secretary. How could she have spouted such bullshit, even if it was a Hail-Mary pass trying to keep the woman she loved out of danger? It was nowhere near the truth. She'd been a private investigator when their paths first crossed, just starting out and stumbling through case after case trying to turn a profit. She sat in Dale's chair and thought about the days before they found each other. She had finally found stability working for a private investigator named Glory, who pulled the rug out from under her by relocating. Ari was left behind with her own license and an agency she had no idea how to run.

  At that point in her life, everyone seemed transitory. She left her mother, her mentor left her, and every woman she took to bed ended up leaving because she couldn't figure out when or how to reveal the truth about her dual nature. She didn't know which date called for the "by the way I can change into a wolf" conversation.

  Then Dale showed up. She began their relationship by saving Ari from a group of hooligans and giving her a hamburger, then took her home. That night Ari was disoriented enough that she changed into human form and crawled into Dale's bed. The screaming subsided quickly enough, and the conversation turned to practical things like what Ari did for a living and Dale's current unemployment situation. Dale had taken a few business classes before dropping out of college, and she offered to get things on a smooth track in exchange for a little rent money. Somehow it had turned into a full-time job, not just setting up client meetings and filing, but filling stashes of clothes, giving Ari post-change massages, and renaming the agency something that actually attracted clients.

  "Just a secretary," Ari muttered, rubbing her face. When it came down to it, Dale was Bitches Investigations and Ari was just the employee who did the majority of the legwork.

  She took one of the business cards out of the drawer and placed it on the blotter. Her name was underneath the embossed name of the agency, and she picked up a pen to add Dale's name underneath it. Dale was her partner in every sense of the word. She was going to stop taking that for granted and start making sure she knew just how vital she was.

  The wolfsbane was set to be moved at six-thirty, which gave her an hour and a half before she had to be in p
osition. She used Dale's desk phone to call her mother so she could fill her in on everything that had happened since that morning.

  Gwyneth answered on the second ring. "Ariadne?"

  "Mom. I know where they're making the wolfsbane. It's a place called the Orarian Group." She gave the address. "They have a lab on the third floor, and that's where the drug is being manufactured. Lorne is afraid the location has been compromised, so they're moving it tonight. Six-thirty. I convinced Lorne to let him join them in the transfer, but I thought you'd want to get someone else moving on it. Someone from our side."

  "I'll see who is available."

  "Do you know anything about what happened at the Bull and Terrier?"

  There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. Not much, but enough to make Ari nervous. "Yes, I've been filled in. Miss Frye did a superb job cleaning the place up this afternoon. Everyone is still being cautious, but they feel they've averted catastrophe. We owe Miss Frye a debt of gratitude."

  Ari smiled even as she wondered where Dale was. If she had already finished cleaning up the trap, shouldn't she be there? Her pride overwhelmed her anxiety. "Yeah... she did well today."

  "Are you all right? You sound weary."

  "Just a long month." She looked at the desk calendar and saw how many days were left before the sanctuary of February. "I found a hunter this morning. Jacqueline Ramsey. The wolf she was targeting killed her, so we had to cover things up. I have to send a progress report to her boss at six, but after that no one should try finding her for a while."

  "You were complicit in a murder?"

  Ari closed her eyes. "I didn't have much choice, Mom. Serena Ahearn had been dosed by this hunter, the same hunter who had killed her husband. She was under the influence of the drug and... I guess she went a little feral. There was nothing I could have done to stop her."

  "Or so you're telling yourself now."

  "You would have done the same thing."

  Gwyneth said, "Yes, I would have. For the record I'm not condemning you for this. You did the right thing. Leaving the hunter alive would have been a ridiculously dangerous move. I'm just surprised to hear you say we're at all alike."

  Ari pressed her thumb against the bridge of her nose. "I just called to fill you in. If you have anyone who can sabotage that shipment, I would appreciate it. Barring that I'll call you tomorrow to let you know where the wolfsbane ended up."

  "Take care of yourself, Ariadne."

  "It's what I've been doing since I was fifteen. Not planning to stop now." She hung up and rubbed her face with both hands. She was tired, and she would have given anything for a nap, but she needed to be alert and ready for the transfer. It bugged her that she didn't know where Dale was, but the odds were that she was angry about their argument and had gone straight home. Ari decided she would swing by to pick up a change of clothes, make a face-to-face apology, and hopefully get her head on straight before she was due to meet with Lorne for the transfer.

  #

  "Your girlfriend is worried about you."

  Dale looked at Ari's mom and then quickly looked away. She had been ignoring the phone call, but she knew Ari had been on the other end of the line. "Yeah, well. Hopefully she won't have to worry very long. What did you say about a murder?"

  "A canidae dosed with the wolfsbane attacked and killed the hunter who had poisoned her. Ariadne helped cover it up."

  "God," Dale said. She suddenly understood why Ari had been so tense on the phone earlier. She wasn't being overprotective for the sake of it, or because she doubted Dale could handle herself. She had been given a reminder of what wolfsbane could do, of what it could make someone do, and she'd overreacted. Dale suddenly felt like the biggest jerk in the world for letting it get to her. "Poor Ari..."

  Milo sensed the tension in the air and decided to change the subject. "So, Gwen. You said something about being available. We're here."

  "Yes, indeed you are," Gwyneth said.

  They were in the living room of her house, the curtains drawn on the windows that faced the street. Dale had gotten a quick introduction to all of the British canidae currently stationed around the room, and a few of them were still giving her wary looks of distrust despite the fact Milo had vouched for her. Dale was trying to appear as non-threatening as possible while also trying to keep their names straight. There were six in all, not counting Milo: the pretty brunette was Paige, and she had joined Dale and Milo on the couch when they finally decided Dale was harmless enough to join them; Paige's husband, a muscular man named Owen; an Eurasian woman named Hannah and her stern-faced partner, Mia; a black man named Benji; and the youngest of the group, an Indian man named Tarun.

  They'd been staying at the house Milo still technically owned, but they were using Gwyneth's house as a base of operations. Dale felt bizarre being in her girlfriend's childhood home without her girlfriend actually being there. Then again, apparently Ari had been there several times in the last few weeks without bringing it up, but she had her reasons for secrecy. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against the closed lids.

  "You all right?" Paige asked softly.

  Dale looked at Paige and smiled. "Yeah. Just a rough time right now."

  Gwyneth said, "Hopefully Ariadne has found something to make the rest of the month a little easier. We now know where the wolfsbane is being manufactured. It's being moved in an hour and a half, and she believes we can hijack the shipment. There will still be some wolfsbane out there, of course, but if we can cripple the hunters' ability to resupply their forces with this drug, we can even the playing field."

  "And then what?" Tarun asked. "We take away their weapons so we can attack them on even ground? What happened to Miss Frye tonight was done by us. By our side. That is... that is not okay with me. I don't care if they started this, if this is just some month-long hunter celebration. I will not allow myself to be dragged down to their level of violence just to survive."

  Owen said, "You may not have a chance, Tarun. Right now the world out there is kill or be killed. Even if we strike first, it's still self-defense. They're turning our people into weapons. All we're doing is taking that weapon away from them. If a hunter gets hurt in the process, I think they brought that on themselves."

  "Yes, but where does it end?" Benji said. "An eye for an eye, a death for a poisoning... they hijacked a canidae bar, do we drive a truck into their hunting lodge or whatever the hell they call it?"

  Gwyneth said, "We do whatever is necessary to protect ourselves and our species. This is not a war we declared, but we will gain nothing by hiding our heads in the sand. We attempted a peaceful resolution, and it failed. The hunters believe they have an advantage over us because they've been training in secret these past two hundred years. They think they are prepared because they are rested. But our kind hasn't had the luxury of a rest. For a canidae, every day is a war. Every day we wage war against discovery, exposure, and death. The hunters chose to fight us, and we gave them the opportunity to back down. They did not take it. So now we will do what wolves have done since the beginning of time. We will defeat our enemies and we will survive."

  Milo scooted forward to the edge of her seat. "Okay. Rah-rah and all that. But we've got less than an hour to sabotage the labs and stop the shipment from getting wherever it's going. And we have to do it without any of us getting exposed to the wolfsbane that we're trying to capture. Do we have, I don't know, a plan of some sort?"

  Gwyneth nodded slowly. "I have a plan. But I doubt anyone here will like it very much. Especially you, Miss Frye."

  "Can we cut all this ‘Miss Frye' nonsense? My name is Dale." She sighed. "And if it gets wolfsbane off the street, I'll suck it up and do what needs to be done."

  Gwyneth nodded her thanks. "Very well. Tarun, do you have your computer... thing?"

  "My iPad." He turned it on and handed it to her. She examined the screen and turned it so the others could see a map grid of downtown Seattle. "The wolfsbane is being manufactured in a d
rug lab here. Ariadne says that at approximately six-thirty this evening, it will be moved to an unknown locale."

  Mia, who Milo mentioned was a cop back in England, moved to the edge of her stool and braced her hands on her knees as she looked closer at the screen. "What all is around there?"

  "We've got the Westin Hotel, Westlake Square, it's just down the street from the start of the monorail. It'll be heavy-traffic by the time the truck is moving. They're probably counting on that to help camouflage the transfer."

  "We can corral them," Mia said. "We stage an accident there, and there, and we can guide them down the road we want."

  Dale said, "Fifth Avenue is one-way. If we put an accident here..." She stood up to point at the map. "That would force them to use Westlake if their destination was north of the lab."

  "And if it's south, they would be forced onto sixth?"

  Dale shook her head. "Sixth is one-way, too."

  "Christ, does this town have any streets that aren't?" Mia nodded.

  Gwyneth said, "For now it's working to our advantage. We stage an accident on Olive, forcing the transfer to take either Westlake to the north, or continue on to Seventh if they plan to go south. There are enough of us here to cover both possibilities."

  Dale said, "Or we could increase our odds. We could find out for sure the hunters don't use Seventh Street."

  "How would we do that?"

  "I could call Lorne and tell him that I heard a rumor you guys were setting up an ambush. I could say there's something planned to guide them onto Seventh Street, they'll see the car accident and assume that's it, and they'll avoid it."

  Milo said, "It's risky."

  "Lorne knows me, but he thinks I'm just Ari's secretary. He thinks I'm completely oblivious to this whole hunter-versus-wolf thing. If I tell him what I know, he won't suspect anything is up. He'll take the information at face value."

  Paige said, "His reaction will tell us a lot, too. Dale should tell him that both Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street are both going to be out of play. If he dismisses it casually, it means going south isn't on his agenda. We'll know for sure they're heading north and we can focus all of our energy on Westlake."