The Frenzy War

by Gregory Lamberson

  As everyone cleared out, Mace went into his office and closed the door. Sitting at his desk, he took out his cell phone.

  Riding alone in the backseat of Micah’s taxi, Gabriel felt his cell phone vibrating. Checking the phone’s display, he saw Mace’s name.

  “This is Gabriel,” he said into the phone.

  “You pulled a disappearing act on me last night.”

  “It was a necessary precaution. I need to keep my location a secret and can’t afford to be followed.”

  In the front seat, Micah glanced at Gabriel in the rearview mirror, then returned his attention to the road.

  “Tell your people they’re wasting their time in Manhattan,” Mace said. “We have strong evidence that suggests the Torquemadans are holed up in New Jersey, possibly Newark. There are at least three more besides the guy who turned to toast last night.”

  Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Thank you for the information.”

  “I gave it to you in good faith. If you find them, call me.”

  “I can’t promise cooperation from anyone but myself.”

  “Understood.”

  Gabriel hung up on Mace. Scratching one thigh, he called Raphael.

  “What is it?” Raphael sounded tense. “Where are you?”

  “Where do you think? I’m hunting the enemy.”

  “What if I told you the Torquemadans aren’t in Manhattan?”

  Raphael paused. “I’d tell you to consider the source of your information carefully.”

  “And if I narrowed your search perimeter?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I want them caught as badly as you do. I just don’t want the whole pack exposed and endangered in the process.”

  “Where are they?”

  Gabriel looked out the window at the buildings they passed. “Swear to me that if you find them based on my information, you’ll contact me with their exact location and allow me to try my method first.”

  “We could lose them …”

  “I know you won’t allow that to happen. You’re only to get involved if there’s no other option.”

  Gabriel heard Raphael draw in his breath and exhale. “All right, I swear.”

  “They’re in Jersey. Start your search in Newark.”

  Raphael wasted no time hanging up on him.

  “Can I say something?” Micah said.

  “Please.” You’re the only confidant I have at the moment.

  “I’ve already heard mutterings about this situation with Raphael. I don’t like it. He’s calling everyone to join him. I don’t know if anyone’s agreed, but the pack can’t afford to fracture right now.”

  Gabriel sighed. “You’re afraid divisions will form because Wolves perceive me as being weak.”

  “Let’s just say there’s a feeling out there that Raphael’s doing something while you’re running in circles. If he finds the Torquemadans and kills them, you’re handing him the victory he needs to challenge your leadership.”

  He’s not there yet, even with Elias coaxing him along. “Thank you for your candor. Raphael’s still my brother. He’s served me well. I have faith in his loyalty.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Micah said without conviction. “I’ve got your back no matter what.”

  “I appreciate that.” Gabriel’s phone vibrated, and he saw that he had received a text from Karol Williams: Start looking in Newark. He closed his hands around the phone. Mace’s entire team must have known the general vicinity of the Torquemadans’ base. At least he knew Mace wasn’t trying to distract him with a wild-goose chase.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Mom, when will we be there?”

  Melissa looked over her shoulder at Damien. “Soon, if we don’t get lost.”

  “We’re not getting lost,” Arick said behind the wheel.

  Gareth sat up and blinked. “Wow.”

  Deep forest unspoiled on either side of the highway.

  It’s so beautiful, Melissa thought. She and Arick had spelled each other at the wheel, stopping for meals, bathroom breaks, and an occasional view of the Ontario, Canada, scenery.

  “Are you guys hungry?” she said.

  “We just ate,” Gareth said. “That’s what made me nap.”

  “She wants you to nap again,” Damien said.

  A sign appeared in the distance.

  “Hudson Bay,” Arick said. “We should be only ten minutes away.”

  And then what? Melissa wondered. How long would she and the boys have to stay with Angela before Gabriel summoned them home?

  Arick got off at an exit and took a side road on the left. The trees grew denser.

  “Mom, does Aunt Angela have cable?” Damien said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if she has a television.”

  “What?” the boys said in unison.

  “How are we going to play our video games?” Gareth said.

  “Be glad you brought your handheld games,” Arick said. “But I hope you brought a lot of batteries.”

  Damien slapped his forehead. “I never want to leave New York again …”

  “It’s beautiful here,” Melissa said. “This will be good for both of you; I can feel it.”

  Arick slowed to a stop. A wooden gate for a driveway had been left open with a piece of paper tied to it. “Wait here.” He got out, untied the string around the paper, read the note, and returned to the car.

  “What does the note say?” Melissa said.

  “To shut the gate.” He pulled forward, got out, swung the gate closed, latched it, and got back in.

  “Why did you have to do that?” Gareth said.

  “Because Aunt Angela likes her privacy,” Melissa said as the car rolled forward.

  Melissa had always liked Angela, even though she disapproved of her breaking the pack’s rules and mating with the human John Stalk. She had found Angela’s unofficial excommunication from the pack a harsh punishment, though she understood why Angus and then Gabriel had found it necessary to be harder on their own blood than they would have been on unrelated pack members; appearances meant everything in politics. After Stalk had been murdered by a rogue Wolf, Angela had turned her back on the pack and its rules. Now Melissa had to impose on her to take them in.

  For the safety of the children, she thought.

  The road grew steep, and they moved uphill. The boys looked around in wonder.

  “Does Aunt Angela own all this land?” Damien said.

  “I don’t know,” Melissa said.

  A cabin appeared at the top of the hill. Then another and another after that. When they reached the top, she counted six in all.

  “Some kind of closed down camp,” Arick said. “There’s smoke rising from that chimney.”

  He drove them toward the farthest cabin. A black truck sat parked in the dirt driveway. They got out, and Melissa peered at the blue haze in the distance, rising from the lake beyond the trees.

  The cabin’s front door opened, and a woman stepped out. She wore hiking boots, faded blue jeans, and a red flannel shirt, her dark hair short.

  “Looking for me?” Angela said.

  Standing outside the loading bay, Valeria watched Angelo drive off in the SUV with Tudoro beside him. “I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.”

  “You mean you didn’t buy his story about summoning us to duty again?” Michael said.

  “I don’t know.” She turned to him. “What do you have planned? Even if we had more time, law enforcement agencies have got to be closing in on us.”

  “You’re right. It’s different here than it is in Italy, France, or Germany. Everything in New York is so … concentrated. It may have been a mistake for Tudoro to send us here just because this is where the largest pack roams.”

  “What will we do?”

  “I’m not going to leave the status quo in place. We need to make a big move, something that will expose the beasts for what they are. Then the Americans can fight them while we regroup.”


  “I’m nervous about fighting with the apprentices,” Valeria said.

  “They aren’t apprentices anymore. And don’t forget you were one not long ago.”

  “They haven’t seen any action before, and there are three of them. One half of our number …”

  “I know. We’ll have to pair up with them.”

  A droning sound overhead caused them to look up. A helicopter soared in the distance, a searchlight sweeping the area.

  “Let’s park the vehicles in less conspicuous places,” Michael said.

  Rhonda sat in the corner of her cell, flexing the muscles that had grown back in her severed arm. Every time she assumed Wolf Shape and the longer she remained in that form, the more her stump grew. She wondered how long it would be before the Torquemadans noticed. They had not visited her since the night before when they had tranquilized her and removed the body parts of the woman she had killed and her Blade of Salvation. Perhaps they feared her now.

  Good.

  She wanted to kill them all, and she hoped she got her chance, but she suspected time was running out for her, and she wondered how her enemies would seek to destroy her. She had enjoyed killing the woman and feasting on her. Her belly remained full, so she did not care that they hadn’t fed her yet today.

  Hopefully she would feed again soon enough …

  Mace studied a map of Newark when Landry entered.

  “Tony, can you step into the conference room? Shelly and Norton have something on that print.”

  Mace rose and followed Landry into the conference room, where Candice waited with the federal agents. The face of a black man with a shaved head filled the screen.

  “Meet Henrique Marcellus,” Norton said. “The owner of the hand you found last night and presumably the corpse that burned in the explosion. Mr. Marcellus was twenty-eight. He was born in Saint-Gaultier, a village in France. When he was seven, his parents died of drug overdoses on the same night—bad heroin. Henrique was made a ward of the church, which placed him in a foster home until he was old enough for boarding school. After graduating high school, he went largely off the grid: no additional education, no jobs … but a lot of traveling. He spent a great deal of time in Rome, France, and Greece. He arrived here three weeks ago … and hasn’t turned up since.”

  “His story seems similar to Pedro Fillipe’s,” Mace said. “Run a comparison check on them.”

  “We already did,” Shelly said. “The priest who placed Marcellus in foster care and boarding school was named Jonas Tudoro. He also placed Fillipe with his foster parents and boarding school.”

  “What else?”

  “Tudoro has an extensive travel history. He’s some sort of floating ambassador for the Vatican … assigned to Monsignor Delecarte.”

  “Can we find out how many other orphans Tudoro placed with foster families and in boarding schools?”

  “We’re already working on it,” Candice said.

  “And we’ll keep digging,” Norton said.

  Mace glanced at his watch. It was already almost 4:00 PM.

  Only four more hours until Cheryl’s interview, he thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Willy sat watching the funeral home from the passenger seat of Karol’s SUV, which Karol had parked closer than they had been the day before. A thick man in a leather jacket exited the business, and a few minutes later a woman in a purple coat entered. People had visited Gabriel inside one at a time, staying for less than half an hour. Karol identified each person to Willy as a member of the council for the Greater Pack of New York City: Wolves.

  “Why is he meeting with them one-on-one? It’s taking ‘iall day.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a council member, and I’m not Gabriel’s confidante.”

  No, you’re just his spy, Willy thought.

  “I imagine he’s reassuring them. Word on the grapevine is that Raphael’s got his eyes on the seat at the head of the table.”

  “Like the mafia.”

  “Only we’re not criminals.”

  “What about babies?”

  “What about them?”

  “Could I get you pregnant?”

  “It’s possible but unlikely—as long as I’m human when we mate.”

  Willy grunted. “You’d better always be human when we do it. A surprise like that could traumatize me for life. There are laws against that kind of thing too. So, how would the baby come out looking? Normal?”

  “If you mean like you, then yes. I was born in human form, like my mother before me and her mother before her. It’s my natural state, so any cubs I birth will appear human. That’s one of the reasons why we have laws against interspecies procreation: we’re an endangered species, so our women are supposed to produce Wolves. As unlikely as it is that you and I could produce, it’s even less likely that a child of ours will be able to Change.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  She slid her hand onto his leg. “You can’t help it that you’re only human.”

  “Yeah, I’m just as God made me. What about you? Do you believe in heaven?”

  Karol looked at him. “I’m an atheist. Does that bother you?”

  “No, I can deal. Are all of your people going to hell?”

  She smiled. “Do all ofyour people believe the same thing?”

  “No.”

  “The most common religion among my people—I’m

  talking about American Wolves—is that there’s a spirit world and a grand creator. We don’t believe we’re created in the creator’s image because he has no image. Many of us believe that we’re descended from gods, we’ll be reunited with our ancestors when we pass on, and we’ll be treated like gods when we arrive.”

  “Wow, talk about a superiority complex.”

  “The Indians worshipped us. That sort of thing can go to your head.”

  “I could buy you as a goddess.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you follow that religion if it’s so common?”

  “My parents believe it. So does my sister. I guess every family has a dissenting member.”

  “What makes you so special?”

  “I guess because I think I’m not special.”

  “Lady, you turned into a werewolf and saved my life from another werewolf. That makes you the most unique person I’ve ever met.”

  Karol looked at the funeral home. “I’ve been Changing ever since I got my first period. It was a pretty scary time. I’m no different from any other female of my species. If we were gods, we wouldn’t have to hide among your people. If the European Wolves were gods, they’d still be alive today. And if a creator exists, why would he allow us to face genocide?”

  Willy sighed. “Those are deep thoughts.”

  “My people are vanishing. All of us face fertility issues. It’s a matter of evolution.”

  “And if you have my baby?”

  “It will be one more step toward our eventual disappearance.”

  “You’re dour, you know that? I’m talking about a little baby, the most beautiful thing in the world.”

  “I’d love to have your baby. If I do, I’ll be happy. But a baby from you would likely continue your species, not mine, if we can produce one at all.”

  Willy’s cell phone went off. He checked the phone’s display, then took the call. “What is it, Ken?”

  “Get downtown right away. Synful Reading just blew up.”

  “4y, caramba. Copy that.” Hanging up, he turned to Karol. “Put on your siren, kid. It looks like another brick-and-mortar bookstore went down for the count.”

  Karol’s expression slackened. “Synful Reading?”

  “Yeah.”

  She picked up her magnetized strobe light and rolled down her window, then hesitated. “What’s wrong? Let’s roll.”

  “What if it’s a setup? We go to a crime scene where we can’t do anything anyway, and the Brotherhood marches in here and takes out Gabriel.”

  Willy glanced at
the funeral home. “Shit.”

  Setting down the strobe, Karol took out her cell phone.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “I’m warning Gabriel.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “It’s not violating protocol to tell the man his bookstore just blew up.”

  Willy watched her face grow concerned as she waited for Gabriel to answer.

  “Come on; come on.”

  Then the ground shook, and the windows and glass doors of the funeral home shattered.

  “Get down!” Willy threw himself over Karol, shielding her from the blast. He pulled the lever between the seat and the door, and the seat dropped into the reclining position. Unable to see the explosion, Willy heard a deafening roar. The alarm in the SUV went off even before its windows shattered and debris rained down on the vehicle, denting it and shaking it from side to side. Outside, other alarms went off, a cacophony of electronic screams that drowned out the shrieks of men and women. Within seconds, brownish-gray smoke enveloped the SUV.

  Warden Strand and two uniformed corrections officers led Cheryl, Colleen, Stan, Ryan, Paul, and Alex down a windowless corridor of the prison. They passed other guards holding rifles and numerous security cameras before Strand punched a code into a keypad and unlocked a door. “After you,” the man said.

  Although the warden had waived several security precautions in giving them the VIP treatment, Cheryl still found the experience unsettling. She thought the thick walls and steel bars of Sing Sing were far more oppressive than she had ever imagined.

  Maximum security, she reminded herself.

  They entered a wide room with a low ceiling. A single table with two chairs occupied the center of the room, with two more tables pushed against the walls. A Plexiglas window

  five feet high stretched from one end of the far wall to the other, offering a view of a room with several unoccupied chairs. A shudder ran down Cheryl’s arms as she realized where they stood.

  “This is where they kept the electric chair until ‘72,” Strand said. “Six hundred and fourteen people were executed here, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Did you know New York was the first state to use an electric chair?”