Howling Dead

by M. H. Bonham

  “You’re my mate.”

  “Bullshit. I didn’t stand at an altar or in front of a justice of the peace. I didn’t say any vows.”

  “I thought you loved me.”

  Kira felt her throat tighten. She looked into Alaric’s gold eyes, angry and earnest.

  “Kira,” he whispered.

  She turned and fled, heedless of the cries from Alaric—or from Jim.

  K

  Kira ran, her mind whirling with Alaric’s words. You’re my mate… How could she be? Sure, they had sex. Great sex. Wild sex. But that didn’t mean you were married. She liked Alaric a lot. She felt that she could even love him over time. But marriage? What was that? She’d settle down and have—what? Kids? Puppies? Or—what did the Boy Scouts call wolf pups? Cubs? Her mind strayed to a kid she had known growing up—his name, she remembered uselessly, was Mike. He had proudly shown her each of his Cub Scout badges as he had earned them.

  But Alaric was no Cub Scout. She doubted he even knew what merit badges were. And now he was saying she was his wife. His wife! Kira wondered what Susan would’ve said if she had heard that. She wondered what Spaz would’ve said.

  Spaz. Kira felt a pang of guilt. She didn’t know where he was or whether he was even alive. Verdandi said he was, but she was just a crazy old woman. Wasn’t she? Alaric didn’t think so. He had called her a Norn—one of the Norse goddesses of fate. Like she believed in Norse goddesses?

  Kira ran blindly, not really paying attention to where she was going. She was only aware of her breath, rising and falling raggedly in time with the pounding of her feet—and the pounding of her heart. It took a while but eventually she came to her senses.

  She was following the bike path back to Lower Downtown. The air along the Platte River was cool and humid, but she was sweating from the exertion. She caught movement to her right as she slowed down, but saw that it was just a homeless man on the ground, curling up with his tattered blanket. Kira kept moving until she got her bearings. She was maybe a mile or two from Auraria and not far from Commons Park. She could try to go home, if she wanted to, but she didn’t really know what to expect there.

  Kira shivered and looked up at the stars. Her life had become awfully complicated since the werewolf attack. She had become someone she really didn’t want to be. Like it or not, she was now a werewolf. Despite her denial, she knew the wolf was changing her in ways she never wanted. She had killed a man, had almost been killed several times, had nearly been raped, had met two dangerous and exciting men—and she had made love to one of them. Her best friend was dead and her only other friend from college had been kidnapped and might be dead. It was enough to piss off a saint, as her mother used to say.

  Kira felt a pang of guilt. What would her parents say if they learned their daughter was a werewolf? Her dad would probably be excited and ask all about the transformation. She could hear his voice in her head: “But what does it feel like?”

  She grinned despite herself as she imagined her mom’s voice answering: “Now, Arthur, that’s not really appropriate…”

  Kira stifled a laugh. No, the werewolf thing would only be a curiosity to them, where other parents would be horrified. Hell, her dad might even buy a wolf cage and kibble for her transformations, thinking to make his daughter safe from possible injury.

  The thoughts were warm and comforting. With so much of her past stripped away, Kira felt alone and powerless.

  “You’re not really powerless unless you choose to be.”

  Kira nearly jumped. She turned around to see Verdandi rummaging in a garbage can Kira had passed not more than a few seconds ago. “You weren’t there,” she said, her voice sounding oddly loud and accusatory in the quiet night. From somewhere toward LoDo, she heard a siren wail.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Verdandi said, looking up. Even in the dark, her blue eyes seemed to glow. “You’ve gotten distracted, Kira. Do you want to save your friend or not?”

  Kira blinked. “How do you know about my friend?”

  Verdandi shrugged. “How does a Norn know about anything?’ She clucked her tongue. “What a waste—there’s half a Frappuccino in here.” She held up a Starbucks cup.

  “You see the future?”

  “I see much,” she said. “If you don’t find Spaz, the evil ones will win. They will kill him. They’ve already killed your other friends.”

  A lump filled Kira’s throat and she felt her mouth go dry. “Who? Who is dead?”

  “Danni Jones and Tom Sullivan.”

  Kira stared. How did the woman know her friends’ names? If her mouth had been dry a moment ago, now it was like sawdust. “How do I find Spaz?”

  Verdandi shrugged. “Spaz gave you the portal. Use it. He searches for you.”

  “For me?’ Kira asked.

  The old woman went back to the trashcan. “Look at this,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Half a sandwich. How wasteful.”

  “How will I know Spaz is there?” Kira pressed.

  Verdandi said nothing, still rummaging. Kira gripped the old woman’s arm. Verdandi looked up, her bright blue eyes staring hard. “You’ll know.” At that, Kira’s hands closed on nothingness; Verdandi slowly vanished, like mist in the air.

  CHAPTER 58

  Kira stared at the spot where Verdandi had been. Before, she had only half-believed the old woman was more than what she appeared, but now she knew otherwise. She had never believed in supernatural beings, skeptical when her dad would tell her about his conversations with ghosts and spirits at archaeological digs, but now she wasn’t so sure. She had always thought he was joking with her, but...

  “Maybe not,” she muttered.

  She looked around and saw that a homeless man was approaching her. Normally she would be terrified, but now she wasn’t. “Spare change?” he asked.

  She smiled chagrined. “Sorry, I have nothing.” She walked by and continued on toward LoDo. She couldn’t stay at her apartment now, as far as she knew, but she decided she at least needed some things from it if she was going to rescue Spaz.

  The sky was lightening in the east, giving the sky a rosy glow. Not quite pink and not quite orange, Kira thought. The high-rises obscured the actual sunrise, but Kira could see the orange glow on their mirrored glass and on the mountains in the west. She took a deep breath of the air and enjoyed the sensation of the wind prickling her skin. She was beaten but not down. She was still alive.

  The traffic was beginning to pick up as she made her way through the streets to her apartment. She still had her apartment keys and let herself in. She went up the stairs and paused at her apartment door. Marks along the door and door jam made her hesitate. The rogue wolves had used crow bars to pry the door open, but someone—presumably Trevor—had repaired the latching mechanism and door posts for it to lock.

  Kira studied the door. It was a lousy job and one she doubted she would have problems forcing open if Trevor had changed the locks. She fit her key in and opened. The door groaned and she turned on the light.

  Then, she turned it off again. But that didn’t work. Her werewolf vision was good in the dark.

  The entire apartment had been ransacked. Her Sun computer and PCs were smashed to bits; the monitors had been ripped from the workstations and the flat screens had been shattered. As she walked in, she smelled urine—both human and wolf—throughout the room.

  She stared, blinking a few times. Turning off the light hadn’t lessened the trauma, but it helped to stop her from focusing on any one thing. Thousands of dollars in computer equipment was destroyed. All her programs and customizations were gone, as well as all her disks and notebooks. She had been meaning to do a backup for some time and save it all off-site, but with the lack of income, she hadn’t done so. Now, she was regretting that decision.

  She was also regretting her lack of renter’s insurance, but she doubted it would’ve covered this. One look at the thousands of dollars of equipment, and an agent would’ve laughed in her face and called the place a busines
s.

  The couches and furniture were smashed or ripped up with the stuffing spread around as if it had snowed. Her clothes, too, were strewn about the place. They were also the source of the urine smell. Assuming they weren’t ripped up, she might be able to wash them and get out the stink and the glass—if she wanted to.

  The only thing that remained untouched was that gawd-awful jade plant.

  Kira stared at the ugly thing and grimaced. She wondered if it was like wolfsbane. She walked over to it and touched the bulbous leaves. They felt fake and even plastic-like, but the plant hardly repelled her—except through its sheer ugliness. Maybe the rogue werewolves had already thought it was damaged enough.

  Kira looked around her apartment a little longer, finding the mattress slashed and pissed on, and the pillows ruined. The drawers had been turned out of her dresser and smashed, but she spied a small Altoids box amid the wreckage. Opening it up, she found her last $20 bill.

  “Yuppie Food Stamps,” Susan used to call them. Kira cached the bill in her pocket and headed out of the room. She needed someplace to get her thoughts together and look for Spaz. Preferably someplace without werewolves.

  She knew just the place. She turned and left the apartment, not caring if the door locked. As far as she was concerned, her whole life was gone now. What she did now wasn’t for herself, but for Spaz.

  If Verdandi was right, the wolves were killing off her friends; she would soon be their victim, too, if she didn’t save Spaz. It didn’t matter if she knew nothing about the development of the Enchanted Forest—she had a connection to Spaz, and that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 59

  Kira entered Uncommon Grounds as the techno-geeks began their daily migration from the coffee shops to their workplaces. Kira felt out of sync, watching two men wearing HP polos and Dockers, complete with cell phones and handheld Internet devices on their hips, walk out of the coffee shop with their large lattes. She caught a snippet of their conversation as she passed.

  “We should be able to do that installation next week,” the brown-haired, slightly balding admin was saying.

  Kira smiled as she watched the other admin—who looked to be just out of college—nod sagely and sip his latte as they passed her by. She walked in, ordered a mocha latte and brought it to the back of the room. The sign on the door indicated that this was a hi-rFreq hotspot for Intermountain Telecom. That was what she needed. That, and peace and quiet.

  She glanced at the people in the back of the shop. Geek 1 was busy on his laptop. No threat. Geek 2 was embroiled in a conversation with Geek 3, who was working on his PDA. All were harmless. She sat away from all of them and held her cup in both hands. She focused on getting into the Enchanted Forest.

  And suddenly she was there. She stood in a grove of aspens, looking up at a mountain range—or a good facsimile of one. She was back in her wolf avatar and loping through the fields.

  Google Danni Jones, she said.

  531 hits, the Forest replied.

  Plus death, Kira said, holding her breath.

  57 hits.

  Shit, she thought. Name sources.

  The Seattle Times, the...

  Stop. Pull up The Seattle Times.

  A window appeared, hovering in the Forest. Kira read the news article in disbelief: a network and computer designer named Danni Jones had been killed almost a month ago in an execution-style shooting. She pulled up Tom Sullivan’s name and found he had been shot in a Washington, D.C. hotel. Randy Green appeared as a missing person in the police databases.

  Kira unplugged from the Forest and stared into her latte. It had become cold and bitter. She drank it anyway and stared ahead. She was alone in the back of the café now. The air conditioner switched on, chilling her.

  Danni, Randy, Tom... Spaz knew he was next. He probably hadn’t thought that Kira or Susan would’ve been in danger, since they hadn’t kept in touch very well since graduation. It had been ten years, but the werewolves were thorough. They had looked for anyone who might be associated with the Forest.

  But why kill those involved in the creation of the Enchanted Forest—assuming Danni, Randy, and Tom even had been? Had they been commissioned to create the Forest? It didn’t seem like Spaz to create something like this under someone’s paycheck, but she couldn’t be sure. For all she knew, Spaz had created the Forest but had kept the truly dangerous areas locked out with his own codes. Maybe the werewolves had had enough, and those with the knowledge and the ability to entering the Forest were killing to gain the power it represented.

  Too many questions and too few answers. She needed to find Spaz, and fast.

  “Where in the hell are you, Spaz?” Kira muttered. She plugged back into the Forest, wandering aimlessly, hoping she would find some trace of him.

  In her wolf avatar, nothing dared approach her even in the darkest part of the Forest. She checked the IPs and found that she was in the heart of the Intermountain Telecom systems. She checked her links on Mini and learned that her access was still safe. As long as she had Mini, she could still hop from machine to machine, having used NIS to propagate the passwords throughout.

  She looked at the Enchanted Forest, and mentally studied the layout. Spaz was a fucking genius, she decided. The Forest was complex, and yet so simple. At its simplest stage, she could hop from machine to machine with no usernames or passwords—the entire system was built on the link layer and the sockets used to establish a connection of sorts. Being lower than the transport layer (TCP), it wasn’t without its faults, but the verification was sophisticated.

  But where would she start? The entire world was a massive river of data that she couldn’t possibly hope to trace. She could trace individual datastreams, but it would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  Unless the needle wanted to be found. Kira tried to relax first and read the streams of data as they flew by her. Surely Spaz had to know that his invention restructured thought patterns. He’d had the longest exposure to the headsets. Even if he wasn’t a lycanthrope, she guessed he would’ve eventually experienced the change at the neuron and synapse level. So, it stood to reason that he would be able to get to the Enchanted Forest or even the Internet. But how would she find him? And how would she recognize him? If the rogue wolves knew he was capable of connecting without the headset, he would be dead.

  Where did a kidnapped needle in a haystack hide so he would be seen? Her She-Wolf avatar was a bit intimidating. It was time to choose an avatar that Spaz would know.

  Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

  Of course, Spaz knew that she had learned of his penchant for Oz references. She considered each of the characters and deliberately chose the one that would leave no doubt as to what she was. She morphed herself into her chosen avatar and began to walk. The Forest grew darker as she walked. She continued to walk down the path, keeping her new eyes on the look-out for possible werewolves. She would be ready for them with her weapon raised.

  Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

  CHAPTER 60

  Kira swung around and almost laughed. The Good Witch of the North appeared beside her. If I only had a heart, she said.

  But Oz didn’t give nuthin’ to the Tin Man, Glinda said.

  That I didn’t already have, Kira grinned despite the metallic skin. She lowered the ax. You’re alive. She set a firewall around them and they changed into avatars closer to their appearances.

  Barely, sweetie, said Spaz. Jesus, Kira, I wasn’t sure you’d figure it out. But I see you’ve got some talent with this.

  It’s the werewolf thing, Kira said. I wouldn’t have gotten it quite as fast if I hadn’t been bit.

  Spaz stiffened visibly. You’re one of them, aren’t you?

  Not intentionally, Kira said. I was bit, remember?

  Shit, Spaz said. He fell silent.

  Shit, Kira said. Your hand…

  Yeah, Spaz said. I’m one of you, aren’t I?

  Next full moon... but I don’t think th
ey’re going to let you live that long, she said. Where the fuck are you?

  I don’t know, Spaz said. A warehouse, I think.

  You don’t know?

  I was blindfolded and kinda indisposed. You know, the pain thing.

  Did they put you in a car?

  Yeah.

  How long?

  Maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

  Kira sighed. This was beginning to feel like Twenty Questions. I wish I could see where you were.

  Well, you could see and feel what I do, Spaz suggested.

  How?

  Get inside my head, Spaz suggested. The link works both ways if there isn’t a firewall.

  Kira stared at him. You’re shitting me?

  Would I, girl? His expression was so earnest that Kira didn’t doubt for a moment he was serious.

  How do I do it? Kira was intrigued.

  Open network, baby. Come on in. The IP addy is 255.255.255.255.

  Broadcast, Kira thought. She pinged the broadcast address and Spaz returned an ICMP ping. Kira noted the address and plunged right in. Suddenly she felt pain burning along her right hand and she cringed. Jesus, Spaz, this hurts! She could see nothing, and smell little.

  No shit, Kira, he said. Can you figure out anything?

  Kira felt like shit, but she knew it was how Spaz felt. Despite the bravado, Spaz was scared and sick. When the wolf bit off his hand, he had shit his pants and passed out. They hadn’t really cared for him—they were keeping him alive only because he knew how to configure the Enchanted Forest’s interface for the werewolves. Both he and the werewolves knew he would be dead after his job was done. At the same time, he didn’t want them to disassemble him piece by piece.

  Kira frowned. Beyond the pain and the darkness, all she could really smell was his own sweat and bowels. It wasn’t pleasant, but she knew what hell he was going through, now. His nose was nothing like hers, but Kira’s werewolf senses had taught her how to analyze even a whiff.

  Sniff the air, she told him.