He didn’t even try to justify the visit with a military reason. Sure, they might give him some worthwhile intel, if he asked, but that wasn’t the reason he was going. He was going because he wanted to, nothing more.
Two of his team, Seth and Rob, tended to snore, and he had used that as an excuse to get out of his cot and find a quieter place to sleep. Others had done it before, so he doubted anyone would question that. If anyone did try to find him with his leave authorization, he’d just say he was racked out in one of the team’s GMVs.
“Ready?” Aiden asked Hozan.
His friend didn’t say anything. He just shifted, something that still freaked Aiden out to watch even after he’d done it himself so many times. It still helped Aiden to close his eyes to shift, but with Hozan watching, he kept them open, triggering the transmogrification into his varg form.
As the night air became alive, Aiden struggled to get on his assault pack. His shoulders were not as flexible as when in human form, and he’d forgotten to extend the straps. With Hozan patiently waiting, he slipped the pack on and picked up his M4. Hozan had told him he didn’t need it, but aside from simply feeling more secure with it, he couldn’t very well just leave in lying out on the ground. He couldn’t fit the flak jacket in his pack, so he had stashed it under an empty fuel drum, but if someone found the flak jacket while they were gone, no big whoop. A weapon, though, would be a different thing.
Hozan turned and with a huge leap, bounded up on top of the HESCO[90] barrier and disappeared over the edge. Aiden waited a moment to see if there was an outcry, and when things remained quiet, he followed. It still struck him as rather odd that someone as big as he was could move about so quietly and without causing a major commotion. He jumped down lightly on the other side, his huge thighs absorbing the impact. Hozan had already taken off, but with his varg nose, his friend might as well have left a string of chemlights. Aiden broke into a trot, and within a few moments, was out of the village adjacent to the FOB and into the forest.
He caught up to Hozan, and the two picked up their pace. Aiden had told Hozan that he had to be back by 0430—at the latest. By cutting off the path and climbing over some high areas, Hozan said they could be there in less than 90 minutes. With 90 minutes returning, that still would give them about two hours with the tribe. Whatever Zakia wanted, Aiden hoped they could get it done within that amount of time.
Aiden was breathing heavily as they climbed at a dead run, his lungs heaving like bellows. But it wasn’t painful or particularly taxing to him. As a human, he would never have been able to keep up the pace, no matter how fit he was. It was at times like these that he marveled at what he had become and at the sheer power he now possessed.
As they crested a small ridge, they surprised three markhor, a local deer, which bolted in a panic. Aiden almost took after them in pursuit, his hunting instincts taking over. Only Hozan’s steady presence kept him grounded. He tested the breeze wistfully as he ran after his friend until he could no longer smell the animals.
Eventually, Aiden could pick out the scent of other werewolves. He was not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that he couldn’t sense Zakia in her lycan form.
The two slowed to a trot and entered the small open area in the village. Except for a few small children who were in human form, everyone else was a varg, and they gathered around their two visitors, most of them obviously excited at the prospect of having guests. Aiden half expected them to all to sniff each other’s butts.
How do we greet each other? Aiden wondered. He’d never thought to ask if there was any kind of secret handshake or whatever.
Aiden wasn’t sure if he was supposed to shift back into human, but with everyone else a varg, he decided he’d wait until Hozan shifted.
As a varg, Aiden never sat down much. He could sort of settle on his haunches, but he didn’t use chairs or such. It wasn’t surprising to him then, that no one in the village sat. They moved en masse to the back of the village where a wicker dome held a number of chickens captive. One of the vargs reached under the dome and pulled out a squawking chicken. He ignored the wings flapping furiously as he brought the bird to Zakia. She took it, and with one quick bite, severed the head. She then offered the carcass to Hozan, who took it and bit off a chunk of the trembling body before handing it back to the alpha. She then turned to Aiden and offered him the dripping bird.
The thought of raw, bloody meat still bothered him in the recesses of his human mind, but in the here and now, as a varg, he started salivating. Part of him wanted to turn away, but he took the chicken, and seeing how much Hozan had bitten, took an equal amount in one bite. He handed the remains back to Zakia as the hot blood coursed down his throat, the coppery flavor sending almost electric jolts of pleasure through him. Hozan had warned him a multitude of times about the dangers of going feral, and it was in times like this that he had to acknowledge the attraction to just shucking the world of man away and running wild in the mountains. He wanted to go back and find those markhor and run them down.
More chickens were brought out, and each member of the tribe took a bite, even the small children still in human form, the blood running down their chubby cheeks. Aiden realized that this was a ritual of sorts, but he didn’t know if it was an Afghan thing or a werewolf thing.
After the last chicken had been consumed, a few of the tribe shifted back into human form, some to take care of the children, some to take a seat and sip shomleh. Most remained in varg form, though, and as Hozan hadn’t shifted, neither did Aiden. He stood there, just taking in the scene while Zakia, Hozan, and another male talked. Aiden’s ears were more than good enough to hear what they were saying, but as he didn’t speak Farsi, he just ignored them.
One female walked right up to him and spoke in guttural Pashto.
“Za na poheegum,” he said, his stock Pashto phrase.
She seemed to find that funny, as did others around them, all leaning back and making the stuttered howl that Aiden knew was varg laughter.
Aiden knew she was interested in him in a physical way, even though he wasn’t sure how. But he was certain of that. Maybe it was those pheromones Hozan had told him about. She wasn’t in lycan form, but still, something was going on there.
Aiden was still getting used to his varg body, and years of human imprinting had cemented into his mind what was a good looking woman. A big, hairy varg didn’t fit the bill, but still, something piqued his curiosity. He wondered what she would look like as a human, and he was tempted to shift back to see if she would follow. He was also well aware that they would both be naked if they shifted.
Thoughts of Claire flitted in the back of his mind like a butterfly trying to get out of a net. He tried to ignore them. He loved Claire, and no mountain varg was going to replace her, but still, his body was responding, and he couldn’t help but wonder what or even how two vargs got it on. Around her were at least six or seven other vargs, and he didn’t get a feeling that any of the males were taking offense at her interest. Once again, he wondered at how much Pashtun Afghan and how much werewolf these people were. He didn’t think the overt physical interest would be aimed at him in another Afghan village.
The rest of the evening was spent with the vargs teaching him various words in Pashto. With the varg vocal chords constraining what he could say, the others seemed to take delight in his pronunciation. At one point, they brought forward a little boy, no more than four years old, and had the boy, with his clearer human pronunciation, speak words for him to repeat.
With a little human boy surrounded by towering werewolves, this wasn’t a Norman Rockwell painting, but still, it somehow had a down-home feel to it. And that made Aiden happy. He felt like he finally belonged somewhere, or at least had found someplace where he could belong if he so chose.
He was disappointed when Hozan broke off his talks with Zakia and the other elders. It was time to leave. He picked up his small teacher and held the boy high, saying “da khoday pa amaan,” which he was s
ure meant goodbye. The boy’s giggling human laughter was a counterpoint to the howling laughter of the vargs, and Aiden let loose, turning his laughter into a long, drawn-out howl.
He didn’t want to leave, and he wondered what would happen if he stayed. It wasn’t a serious thought, though. He was a Marine, and he had his team back at the FOB. Then there was Claire and his mom. No, he was not going to stay, but the thought has some allure.
He and Hozan took their leave of the village, but before they started to run, Aiden stopped Hozan and asked what the purpose of the visit was.
“First, they decided that they had to know what was going on in the world of man. They wanted to know who was in their mountains, who was fighting who. They have been isolated for a very long time, and Zakia felt she had to understand the situation in order to better protect her people.”
“That’s it? But why did I have to come?”
“Because you are one of the foreigners, and they wanted to take a measure, as you say it, right? To take a measure of what your people are. And they wanted to see if you would fit in, in case they need new blood in their tribe. Even they know the dangers of inbreeding.”
“New blood? Inbreeding? They want babies?” Aiden asked, shocked.
“Isn’t that the natural condition? To have healthy young to carry on to the future?”
“Yeah, but, I don’t . . . I mean, we’re not . . . I can’t even communicate with them. How can I do them any good? Even if I wanted to, that is.”
“It seems to me you were communicating pretty well with Kashmala, there.”
“That girl? We never understood a single word from each other,” Aiden protested.
As Hozan broke out into a trot, he turned back and said, “You don’t need speaking for what she might want, now, do you? There are other ways to communicate.”
He thinks this is fucking funny! Aiden thought as he broke out into a run after him. It’s patently ridiculous, isn’t it?
Still, imagined images that both intrigued and scared him at the same time kept popping into his mind as he ran back with Hozan to the FOB.
Chapter 14
Keenan stared at the frozen frame on the screen, trying to will it to come into better focus. He just couldn’t tell.
“I don’t know,” MT said, looking over his shoulder.
One thing for sure was that Cpl Kaas had done something out of the ordinary last night, but what, neither of them knew. It could have been sneaking off to get laid, assuming prostitution even existed in the decrepit village outside the FOB. More likely, there was some black marketeering going on. In that case, Kaas was a criminal and should be court-martialed.
What neither of them expected was that before doing whatever he was going to do, he took off his battle rattle and dumped the gear behind some of the empty wooden crates in back of the motor pool. The camera caught a glimpse of another person, whom Keenan would have to track down, then the flak jacket was dropped behind the crates, giving the spycam only a tiny field of vision. It was what they saw, or maybe didn’t see, that was giving them pause. The spycam was top of the line, but the lens was tiny, so both the quality and light-gathering capability were limited. So when something barely grazed the field of view, neither one of them could swear as to what it was. Given that the cam was pointed at the dirt, it was a good bet that the image was the edge of a foot. But what they couldn’t confirm was if that foot was in a boot or not. Very little of it flashed in front of the cam’s field of view, and it was moving fast, but something seemed off. Keenan just couldn’t see enough to say just what. Was it really possible that Aiden was an honest to goodness werewolf? Was the colonel right about all of this? Or were the two of them seeing things that just weren’t there?
Keenan’s contact within the team hadn’t seen anything yet. The spycam recording showed nothing. The whole concept of real werewolves was pretty difficult to accept, and the colonel notwithstanding, neither he nor MT was convinced. Yet something was weird about the corporal. That alone was proof of nothing, however. They had to have solid evidence to prove it, but if he was just a tough son of a bitch with no paranormal abilities, how do you go about proving that? How do you prove a negative?
“There isn’t enough here,” Keenan said at last. “I’m not going to send this up and have the colonel all over our asses when this could be—probably is—nothing.”
The colonel had been ramping up the pressure, but Keenan thought that a false-positive would be much worse than no indication at all. The most logical course of action would be to wait until they had something stronger, one way or the other.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe it. You knew her?” Aiden asked Manny.
“Well, like I said, bro, I knew of her. It wasn’t like we were close. ’Sides, back then, little guys didn’t like the little girls.”
“I heard you still didn’t like girls, Manny,” Cree said, but without conviction from his cot where he was reading a graphic novel.
When a team member left himself open to a barb like that, it had to be exploited.
“Fuck you, too,” Manny said in an equally rote manner.
“I mean, we were in grade school, so it was a long time ago,” Manny continued to Aiden.
“Was she a bitch then, too?” Aiden asked.
“Certifiably, bro, certifiably.”
Aiden hadn’t even known Manny was a Vegas native until this afternoon. His family moved to Bakersfield before junior high, and neither of them had crossed paths until joining the team. Now, in one of those million-to-one shots, it turned out that Manny knew Teri Brubaker, the girl whose rejection had spurred Aiden to enlist.
Aiden had heard Manny mention John Mull’s Meats and Roadkill Grill, a longtime local Vegas BBQ joint, and that opened up the entire conversation that gravitated to whom they knew in common. Aiden gleefully related the misfortune that had befallen on Teri and her then-boyfriend Ben Souter since high school.
Aiden had come to like the JTAC. Manny had not been through any of the recon pipeline, and as neither Aiden nor Doc had done the A&S, that gave them a commonality. Manny was a good Marine, though, which was not surprising as not many Marines were given the opportunity to become JTACs. They had to be shit-hot when controlling the awesome capability of the Coalition air power. A tiny slipup and civilians or Marines could be blown away.
Aiden and Doc went back further, but along with Cree and Brett, Manny was probably his closest friend. The entire team was tight, and Aiden had no issues with anyone, but he seemed to spend most of his free time shooting the shit, working out, or playing cards with those four men.
Chapter 16
Over the next ten days, Aiden twice went with Hozan up to the village. Aiden chose to ignore the fact that when Hozan had first arrived, he warned Aiden about shifting at all, and now he was encouraging it. Hozan told him it was good for him to be around other vargs, to socialize and begin to understand what it was like to be in a tribe.
The fact that Hozan himself did not live in a tribe was not lost on Aiden, but the one time that Aiden had asked about it, Hozan had abruptly and firmly cut him off. Aiden knew Hozan had had a family, and something had happened to them before the war, but that was about it. Aiden could see that Hozan relaxed more with the vargs of the village. The little trips might be good for Aiden, but they were also good for Hozan, Aiden realized. They were helping his friend heal.
Aiden had hoped to see Zakia as a lycan again. The thought excited him in ways he didn’t quite understand. Part of it felt like titillation, but it was more of a need to bask in her presence. She never shifted all the way, though. She was either human or varg, and that was it.
Hozan explained that shifting to lycan took a lot out of them and that too much time as a lycan could take years off of a life. It also increased the chances of going feral, and the tribe could not afford that. If the Council knew of this small tribe, it would already consider it feral and fair game for elimination. There were occasionally small trib
es like this one that were known by some, but as long as they kept out of sight, they were allowed to exist. But if they drew attention to themselves and became an issue for the Tribe as a whole, then the more reactionary members of the Council would insist on extermination.
Aiden couldn’t imagine this happy, peaceful tribe suffering that fate. He had almost begun to think of them as his tribe, as his family. That bothered him, to an extent. His mother back in Las Vegas was his family. He’d grown up human, after all. He loved Claire and wanted to marry her. Still, he didn’t know how else to describe his feelings. The tribe felt like family.
Kashmala’s obvious interest in him also made him feel uncomfortable, but deep inside, he enjoyed her almost possessive claim on him. She was always with him when he was there. Neither one of them could communicate well without the help of others, but he was surprised at how quickly he was picking up Pashto. Kashmala seemed to take great pleasure in honchoing his learning.
If there was a little lust in his feelings for her, he tried to suppress that. He loved Claire, simple as that. But still, he couldn’t ignore what his body was telling him, and he was sure Kashmala would be receptive to anything he suggested. He felt like he was flirting with danger, and that excited him in its own right. She was not Claire, but there was an underlying attraction there. Maybe Hozan had been right about those pheromone things.
Chapter 17
Nikolai Borisov took a moment to look into the screen before asking, “So, there is no objection if I take action?”
He was not used to video conferencing, but it saved him a trip back to Germany, and he didn’t have to wait for others on the Council to arrive if a quorum was not already there. This new technology was certainly convenient, but without the others there in the room with him, he couldn’t use his nose to gauge the attitudes of others.
The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy Page 30