by M. H. Bonham
Kira paused at the apartment door, stepped into the airlock, and fumbled for the keys in her pocket. The old woman was no doubt just some crazy lady; Kira dismissed her words as the ramblings of a person on the street. Still, Kira couldn’t get them out of her mind—did the old woman know that Kira was a lycanthrope?
Kira laughed to herself. She had let those crazy people talk her into believing she actually was a werewolf. She unlocked her apartment and opened the door, and the stench of rotting food overpowered her.
Kira almost gagged, but instead walked in. Funny, she hadn’t noticed it before today. No doubt Alaric or Megan would blame her lycanthrope senses, she thought wryly as she pitched the old boxes full of rotting food into the garbage. Well, she thought, tying the garbage bag up, maybe being a werewolf would make her neater. She was sure her mom would approve.
After cleaning up the apartment, Kira dug through the freezer and found a half pound of Starbuck’s Vienna Roast that had been Susan’s. Before long, she was back at the computer with a hot cup of java, wondering what to do next.
She opened the odd message from [email protected] and stared at it. Whoever sent her the message knew her, and knew a wolf had bitten her. Or a werewolf, she conceded. Getting her email address wasn’t too terribly hard—Kira knew she could be Googled and found through her blog or her webpage. Maybe the sender was Alaric or Megan—they seemed the most likely suspects, appearing out of nowhere—but something told her that they weren’t.
Instead, she surfed over to the Denver Post’s website and started to search the back issues, only to find she needed an account and a credit card payment. Kira snorted and typed in, [email protected] as a new user, and was rewarded with a message saying that the account existed. She entered Bob’s login and typed IMAMAN. She grinned as the website let her in.
“You’re a dickhead,” she said out loud. “A predictable dickhead, too. Stupid moron, I bet this is how the hackers figured out how to break into Intermountain.”
Kira enter the words wolf attacks in the search box and let it run. The Denver Post soon brought up a list of articles with the words highlighted. Kira pulled up each one as she sipped the coffee. A homeless man was attacked on Market Street. A woman was attacked on Wazee. Another woman attacked near Larimer.
She sat back and sipped the coffee. It would have tasted better as a latte, she decided. “Christ,” Kira muttered. “They’re all LoDo.” All of the attacks, except hers and Susan’s, had occurred in the Lower Downtown area. She went through the articles again to be sure.
She looked down at the card from James Walking Bear next to her monitor and thought about calling him. Surely, he knew the discrepancy already? Maybe that’s why he had asked such nosy questions. She looked at the card. She could call him and tell him about Alaric and Megan.
Kira reached for the phone but stopped herself. What would she say? That she met a bar full of werewolves? That she had been bitten by a werewolf and now she turned into a wolf when the moon was full? Kira snorted. He’d lock her up for sheer lunacy. She laughed at the pun. She didn’t believe it—why would he?
She returned to the email from [email protected]. Looking at the headers, she could already guess it was spoofed, and ran a trace on it. She entered it into spamcop.net and frowned when the trace came back to Intermountain Telecom.
“Intermountain, eh? Could be anyone,” she muttered. Intermountain was an ISP and hosted a large number of corporate websites and emails as well as Internet commerce and private users. They owned part of the Internet backbone which made tracing beyond them somewhat tricky, especially if the sender was a user of Intermountain or if they networked to the ISP.
Kira knew that forwarding to root or to the postmaster would simply garner Bob Marks’s attention. She certainly didn’t need that. She pulled up a window and entered the IP (network) address of the main server, Evans. At Intermountain, they had a naming scheme that used Colorado mountain names: Mount Evans, Quandary Peak, Grays, Torreys, and others. The telnet screen came up and she typed in root and the password.
Login incorrect.
Kira raised an eyebrow. Well, she hadn’t expected Bob to be a complete incompetent, did she? She tried the Oracle database logins and other higher levels that would give her access to superuser shells. Nothing. The system was tight.
She had one backdoor. The computer’s name was Mini. It wasn’t really much of a machine at Intermountain, but it did have a backdoor Kira had installed when she got there. Its name was stupid and didn’t go with any of the other naming conventions. She entered Mini’s IP address and it came up.
Kira sighed and ran her Crack program from another window and began the long grind to try to break in. She set the window into background mode and pulled up Netscape again to surf the web. Pulling up Google, she entered werewolves. To her surprise, she saw www.den-wolfpack.com listed under the third listing.
“So there is a den-wolfpack.com,” Kira muttered. She clicked on the link and watched it load a page with Denver’s outline and a pack of wolves in front of it. Did the guy who emailed her actually have an account on a website with those servers? She did a whois and a traceroute and found that, too, went to Intermountain.
“All roads lead to Rome,” she mused. She took another sip of coffee and found it was lukewarm. She felt helpless until the Crack program turned up something. She dug into her pocket and pulled out Spaz’s card. Right below all his throwaway accounts was a hand scrawled address: [email protected].
Kira hated asking for help, but Spaz was the best she knew. If anyone had the latest technology to track something, he did. She copied and pasted the headers of the email and sent a quick message.
Spaz —
Good seeing you. Got a mystery here. Odd message from a spoofed addy. I’m guessing Intermountain—can you verify and pinpoint it?
TIA
—Kira
Kira clicked into the website and went through the menus. As she clicked through, she found that the site was sparse. It featured basic definitions of what werewolves were, a history of werewolves, and even a werewolf shop with T-shirts and mugs (via Cafépress), but nothing really interesting. There was only a small button on the first page which said, Members Only.
Kira clicked on it and received a login prompt. It had already filled in the username as guest. Kira grinned and started another Crack program in another window. She chuckled after a minute or two when the Crack program came back with the word, werewolf.
“W00t! Easy, easy, easy,” she said as the login completed. The webpage came up with a menu of choices: History, Blog, Chatroom, News, Database, and others. Kira was about to click into the News section, when she decided to click into the Database instead.
Kira blinked as Oracle prompts came up. “Oracle?” she said puzzled. Oracle was high-buck. That meant that the people who were hosting this site had money or were using someone else’s database. Intermountain had Oracle, but so did Qwest, MCI and a number of other companies throughout Denver. Still, they had to be big to use it. Or clever enough not to be seen using it.
She hit a question mark and stared at the prompt. Enter a phrase or name. What should she enter in? she wondered. A phrase or name? “Name?” she asked it. “Like a person?”
Alaric’s name popped into her head. Alaric Kerr, she entered and hit enter.
Alaric Kerr, 35, Alpha pack member for five years. Son of John Kerr and Theresa Thompson, deceased. Born in Colorado Springs...
Kira gazed at Alaric’s photo. He was handsome, she admitted, and she found herself more than just a little attracted to him. He was older than her, too, which probably added to the sense of protectiveness she felt from him. She stared at Alaric’s face for a while until a beep interrupted her, indicating there was new mail.
Kira saved off Alaric’s photo to the hard drive and clicked on the mailbox again. It was from Spaz.
CHAPTER 16
Alaric stared at the pool table for a moment and then set do
wn his cue. Normally, he’d become so engrossed in a pool game, he’d forget all about a woman.
Not this one. Kira had been on his mind all morning and into the afternoon. She was Alpha—as Alpha as he was—and that surprised him. And despite himself, Alaric was quite attracted to her.
Besotted, Megan had said. He would’ve used the word, smitten, himself. She was beautiful in both forms, which made it exceedingly hard to concentrate on anything. Even a pool game.
“You okay?” Mike Fowlkes asked. “It’s been your turn for the past five minutes.”
“You guys play,” Alaric said. He handed the cue to another werewolf named Marcus who had been watching. “I think I need a walk.”
Alaric walked up the stairwell and into the bar. The eyes of thirty werewolves focused on him. He ignored them as he strode forward. As expected, the werewolves moved aside as he walked through the crowd. One lycanthrope didn’t move fast enough and yipped as Alaric made eye contact. Only Cathal blocked his way.
“You going somewhere?” he asked.
“No, just for a walk,” Alaric said. “Keep them in line.”
Cathal grinned, showing his teeth. “As always. I’ve got to get back to work, though.”
Alaric nodded. “Do what you have to. I’ll be back in a bit.”
As he walked out into the bright sunshine, he found himself blinking and pulling out his sunglasses. Damn, he thought. He hadn’t really seen daylight in a while. Most weres tended to make the night their day, and he was no exception. He was feeling tired, staying up past noon, but the truth was he wasn’t sleepy. His mind was on Kira.
She had stepped right into his bar, demanding that he do something about her being a werewolf. Alaric shook his head. Any other were wouldn’t have had the nerve to do that. What’s more, Kira had called it a disease—a disease! What in the goddess’s name was she thinking? He had never met anyone who didn’t like the idea of being a werewolf, once they understood they could control it.
She left the same way she had come in: angry and demanding. Any other woman would have made him angry, but instead he felt infuriated, delighted, intrigued, and everything in between. Most of all, he wanted her.
As Alpha, Alaric knew she was his match. Like it or not, she was a werewolf, and she would soon be his.
K
Kira stared at the email. She had read over it a few times to be sure she understood it.
Kira baby –
Roundy round, baby. Who’d ya piss off? Intermountain for sure but it’s a fucking black hole. WHOIS shows the IP is registered to Intermountain as a subnet but can’t ping the system because of the firewall.
You hit the security? Tight. Did you do that, you naughty girl? Will take me some time to crack this puppy. Let me see if I can send a worm in.
TTFN
—Spazalicious
Kira snickered. Spaz had hacked some of the best machines in some of the top companies. He was so good, he didn’t even get caught. Once, he sent a UNIX worm to wreak havoc at some of the big telecom companies and tied up their machines for days, sending sysadmins scrambling for backups. She hit reply.
Spaz –
Don’t tell me YOU can’t get through. Shit, boy, I thought you could crack anything. My backdoors are hosed—and the network stiks are fucking paranoid. I know it’s an Intermountain Subnet. I’ve never seen that subnet IP used, so it’s not internal. In fact, I don’t recognize it. Can you send them a worm like you did in 2005?
TIA
—K
“Went right through a security hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through,” Kira said with a grin. “Go get ‘em, Spazster.”
But the toughness of tracking the email worried her. Spaz should’ve been able to track the account at least to an interior machine. He too had gotten stymied by the IP address. Kira leaned back and chewed a hangnail on her thumb. There was the server, Evans, but could she crack it? She considered Quandary, Longs, and Sneffles as possible servers to crack, but Bob had a stupid fondness for rdist—a program with distributed software across network machines—which meant that changes took place everywhere. Even stupid changes, she noted.
Kira turned her attention back to the bios of the werewolves and found Megan Olson in the database. Curious, she brought the bio up and was greeted with Megan’s overly cheerful face. Her bio was mostly about her vet clinic south of town. Kira closed the window and entered a wildcard symbol. Up came a list of all the werewolves. She stared at the list. Cathal Murphy’s bio caught her eye and she pulled it up.
Cathal Murphy, 32, Beta pack member for ten years. Son of Kyle Murphy and Joan Herberts. Born in Minneapolis, MN. Bachelors of Science, Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder...
“Whoa!” Kira said. “Biker boy is a Hell’s Accountant?” She looked at the photo of Murphy and noted how closely it resembled a mugshot. “So, you’re a bithead, eh? Pretty scary—I wouldn’t have figured you out for a geek.”
She looked further down the bio to the last line: Cathal Murphy now works for Intermountain Telecom.
Kira slammed the mug down; sloshing what little was left of the contents. “Intermountain? What the fuck?” Kira racked her brain trying to remember if she had seen Murphy’s names on the logins. “Cmurphy,” she muttered. She shook her head. “Probably NIS if he was on Evans. Damn, damn, damn.” NIS was a database of users that the systems shared. Kira couldn’t possibly remember all the names because there were hundreds.
Murphy wasn’t with IS—Information Systems—that much she was sure of. But maybe he had been with networks. If so, she might not have had contact with him. Or maybe she did? Maybe he knew about the werewolf attacks on her. Maybe he was the werewolf who attacked her.
Maybe she was losing her mind. Werewolves. Kira snorted and shook her head. She got up and went to the mirror. “Well, if I’m really a werewolf, I should be able to change,” she said, her voice sounding unconvinced. She stared at those golden eyes that stared back at her. What could she do to turn into a werewolf?
She closed her eyes and thought about being a wolf. A wolf. She tried to imagine being one and came up with a dog—her family’s old Labrador Retriever, who had long since passed away. She grimaced. This wasn’t working at all.
Kira tried concentrating on the wolf who attacked her. It haunted her dreams, so it made sense that she would remember it. It was big and gray with large yellow eyes, hot fetid breath, and huge teeth. She replayed the attack in her mind and began to tremble, feeling the terror once again.
Kira forced her eyes open again. This would not do. She walked back to the coffee pot with her mug and poured herself another cup. What was she thinking? That she could actually turn into a wolf? She shook her head. That was crazy.
She looked into the mirror again and stared at those golden eyes. Damn, they reminded her so much of that wolf. She took a sip of the coffee and stared into the eyes that peered over the rim at her. Kira seemed to get lost in them. From somewhere far away, she could hear a lone wolf howl and felt her vision blur. The mug dropped, splattering hot coffee everywhere. Suddenly she was shorter and floundering in her clothes. When she looked up, she was looking at a wolf in the mirror.
Kira tried to shout “No!” but only a whine escaped her lips. As suddenly as she changed, she changed back, her clothes half off her body. Her shoulder and arm were through the neck hole and her jeans were on her arms. She struggled out, feeling like a contortionist. She stared at the clothes for a few moments, then slowly picked them up and dressed again. Kira’s mind was churning and she felt sick to her stomach. Every time she looked in the mirror, those gold eyes reminded her of the awful truth.
Kira was shaking as she sat at the computer one more time. She was a werewolf. There could be no denial now. She looked back at the computer screen. There wasn’t any doubt in Kira’s mind that she was looking at the profile of werewolf who had murdered Susan.
Spaz –
What do you know about Cathal Murphy?
�
��K
CHAPTER 17
Spaz could feel the heat of the werewolves’ breath through the interface. Don’t look back, he thought as he navigated the intricacies of the Forest. In this section of the Forest, it manifested itself as strangely tangled willows and gnarled oaks. Technically, this was an older section, but older was relative. Most of the Forest had been built in just a few years.
He looked back, despite himself. He could see the werewolves’ red eyes and ethereal forms as they loped after him. Spaz needed to find a pathway they couldn’t track him down on. Problem was, most of the openings he found in the routers would let all traffic through—not just him. Spaz needed to find a door that he could close or that they couldn’t easily get through. Otherwise, he’d have to blow the link—and Spaz didn’t want to do that just yet.
An electronic howl buzzed in his head. He rounded a tree to see the Lizard crawling up it.
Still running from the wolves? the Lizard asked. He opened a private chat room. Spaz did a quick traceroute and found he was using an odd address. It was worth a shot to see if the wolves could follow him.
Yeah, said Spaz. He wasn’t out of breath, but the energy to maintain this run was taxing him. He’d have to rest soon...
Watch your back, man, Danni’s dead.
Spaz stared at the message from Lizard in the private chat window. He wasn’t sure if he read it right. He tried again. The words still lingered in his consciousness.
“Fuck,” he said. Spaz’s heart began to palpitate and his mouth became dry. He took a swig of vanilla Coke and stared at the words as they formed and reformed in the window.
Danni? You sure?