by Adam Browne
Wham!
The door burst open and a black-cloaked Prefect strode in.
“Stand away!” they barked.
Immediately the other two Prefects stood back and saluted with the subtle ALPHA wave.
With his tormentors out of his face, Linus was able to sit forward and see the newcomer – a wolfess, slender and russet-furred, armed with a rapier and a disapproving frown.
“Janoah?” Linus mouthed, spitting blood-laced saliva.
“Out,” Janoah commanded simply, flicking a finger at her ALPHA comrades.
The Prefects exchanged looks before the one standing nearest to Janoah elected to speak. “Doctor Josef said we were to interrogate this wolf-”
“I don’t care what Josef said,” Janoah interrupted. “That cat has no authority; he’s not a proper ALPHA Agent, just a contracted researcher. You two shouldn’t even be assisting him without my say-so.”
“Yes, marm, but… he has a warrant, signed by Grand Prefect Nikita.”
“Nikita? Where is it?”
“He has it on him, marm. Josef that is.”
With nod, Janoah said, “Fine. I’ll take full responsibility for what transpires. You’re both reassigned. Go on. Go patrol the city or something until this blows over.”
The nearest Prefect emitted a grateful, “Aye, marm.”
With another salute, the Prefects took their leave without further protest. They obviously didn’t particularly care about seeing their task through, only that they would be on the right side of any potential fallout for not doing so. Linus supposed from his own experience it was wise of them to remain on the formidable Janoah’s side.
The elegant wolfess stood over the stocky wolf, paws cupped behind her as his were wired behind him.
“I thought you were smarter than this, Linus,” Janoah growled. “Losing your head over some passing fancy? I never imagined you’d be so stupid.”
Linus gulped, but said nothing.
“My husband’s made a career out of that, as well you know, and look at him now. Digging up imperium until he rots, which I dare say shan’t be long in his condition.”
Linus dipped his chin, “You helped put him there.”
“And you’ll join him if you continue to break the law!”
“I’ve broken no laws-”
“Don’t bother. I know you’re protecting some dodger girl. I’d let Josef rack you to find out where she is if I cared to know myself, but I don’t. I’m glad she’s given that cat the slip; saves me having to eliminate her.”
Linus sat bolt upright and snorted, “Eliminate her?”
“Ah, silly wolf, so you do care about her,” Janoah chuckled. “It’s a good thing I came when I did. You’d have tied yourself in knots.”
Composing himself, Linus asked, “Why would you need to… to get rid of Olivia?”
“Two Eisenwolves is one Eisenwolf too many. I have the only one. Josef covets him, they all do, Nikita, Silvermane, even the Alpha I dare say… but Rafe’s loyal only to me.”
Linus had stopped listening at, “Two Eisenwolves?”
Janoah chuckled, then sighed, “I’ve said too much. Must be those pretty blue peepers of yours. If I weren’t such a wily wolfess I could be taken in by them.”
Linus’s ‘pretty blue peepers’ nearly crossed in amazement.
Suddenly, Janoah whipped out her rapier! Linus imagined the Prefect was going to plunge her fine imperious blade into his heart and ‘eliminate him’ without a second thought, but she instead cut the ropes binding him to the chair in a trice and sheathed her sword as quickly.
Helping the shorter Linus up, Janoah gently unwound the wire from his sore wrists.
The bruised Howler winced a little.
“I know,” Janoah said, screwing up the wire. Kicking away the bleak new-materials chair to which Linus had been secured, she added, “These things are so uncomfortable, aren’t they?”
Rubbing his wrists, Linus thought he’d better say something, anything, to Janoah. “Thank you,” was all that came to mind.
“Where’s your gear?” was her evasive reply.
Linus visually searched the austere interrogation room for his helmet, shield and swords. “I don’t know.”
“Evidence room. Follow me.”
Linus did so, knowing the only way out of ALPHA’s Den (and Den it was in all but name) in one piece was at Janoah’s back. His mind raced as he followed the enigmatic wolfess down the harsh, unadorned corridors, free of anything so much as a painting or potted plant, even the imperium gas lamps were devoid of beautification, their modesty preserved only by simple frosted glass shades. Why’s she helping me? Is it because I’m a Bloodfang? Because I’m posted at Riddle? Is she so sentimental?
A large rectangular window broke the monotony of the wall on the right. Lost in thought and worry, Linus might’ve passed it by without a care, but a glaring flicker of purplish light drew his attention to the room beyond.
Inside the dark space stood a whole wall of machinery and consoles covered in dials and knobs. Pipes connected the mechanical mass to a metallic table in the middle. Shackled to said table, splayed out like a wolf condemned to some horrible lingering death of old, was Tristan Eisbrand Donskoy.
The big wolf arched his back in mute agony as bolts of imperious energy licked silently over his smouldering grey and white body. The lack of sound only added to the disturbing spectacle.
“A rack?” Linus said.
Recognising Josef Grau as the beast working the rack’s controls, Linus hid himself behind the wall.
“It’s all right,” Janoah said, touching the window. “It’s one-way glass. Sound-proofed as well. The Alpha was fed-up with screams embarrassing him in front of guests.”
Linus growled, “Racking wolves is forbidden!”
“Spare me your wet Rufus rhetoric. I don’t like it, but it’s the only way to break this one. Just be glad he’s on there, not you. You would’ve been next, but for me.”
Linus slowly peeped into the room again.
“Why?” he said, as Tristan writhed in silence, before clarifying, “What’s he done?”
“He’s working for THORN.”
Linus seethed, “What? That’s preposterous! Tristan wouldn’t do that.”
“Know that for a fact do you, Woodlouse?”
“Well… n-nnn-no, but I know him-”
“You’re a naive fool, cub!” Janoah snapped, adding gently, “You’ll learn.” She looked into the room, paws behind back, indifferent to the suffering within. “You see, Tristan hates being a Howler, hates everything about Lupa. He’d see thousands die to overturn centuries of wolfen rule and for what? So he can ditch his responsibility and get stung for free. That’s what his dissident sort believe in, giving venom to all, no control, no borders, no work.”
Despite his better judgement, Linus hazarded, “What’s so wrong with that?”
Janoah explained, “Stupid boy. Do you think the proud hyenas will let us live in peace if we let them go free? Do you think the little beasts will let bygones be bygones after all these years under our boot? Do you think the noble cats of Felicia won’t send their Valours to invade us immediately we drop our guard? The moment the Howlers falter is the moment the other races tear wolfkind down and set themselves up as masters of the continent. They’d all kill each other in the process. It’d be anarchy. Genocide. No. That can never be. Not on my watch.”
Linus kept his opinions to himself this time, but asked, “Isn’t there another way to do this?”
“To do what?”
Linus gestured inside at Tristan.
“You really are a soft fool, aren’t you?” Janoah tutted. “Has Rufus rubbed off on you, or were you always so stupid?”
No reply.
“Tristan has no family, save Ivan,” Janoah huffed, “and he knows we can’t touch his famous cousin. Ivan’s a darling to too many. Besides, the Blade-dancer’s out of town.” After a while, the Prefect turned to Linus, “Do you kno
w anyone Tristan cares about?”
“What?”
“He must care about someone other than himself.”
Sara and Olivia flashed through Linus’s inner eye. “I wouldn’t know,” he claimed insipidly.
Janoah pressed, “What about the two girls? Tell me where they are. It’s all right, Mills, I don’t want them, but if I know where they are I can at least threaten Tristan with their arrest and maybe convince him to talk-”
“I don’t know, for Ulf’s sake!” Linus snapped, before averting his face from both Janoah and the awful spectacle beyond the glass. “Rack me, or let me go. Don’t question me all over again.”
Silence.
“How bold you’ve grown,” Janoah growled. “You used to stammer like a trembling cub at a school play. That day you came to me with that sting for Rufus I thought you were going to pass out from fright.”
Linus said nothing.
“Fine,” Janoah hissed.
On she walked, Linus eventually following. After a maze of corridors and stairs, passing the occasional cloaked Prefect at whom Janoah saluted regardless of rank, they arrived in an open office with a simple square window overlooking ALPHA HQ’s grim central quadrangle. Linus observed that someone had taken the time to attempt to beautify the brutal concrete space with rows of lavenders.
Ahead was a huge door to a walk-in safe, tucked behind a long, partitioned desk and guarded by a pretty, prim-looking white wolfess in a Politzi-like ALPHA uniform.
Janoah walked over and exchanged salutes. The safe door was ajar, to her surprise.
“Who’s in there?” she demanded of the white wolfess.
“Uh… Stenton, Prefect.”
Surprised, Janoah queried, “Rafe? What for?”
“He just said it was for the Tristan case, marm”
Janoah slid the nearby ledger over and turned it around on the desk. Running her finger down the entries she said, “You obviously know Rafe’s not authorised to go in there, since you’ve not logged his visit.”
“No, Prefect.”
“Explain yourself, agent.”
“I… I just. Well, he said it couldn’t hurt. I thought he must have your permission as usual, Prefect Janoah.”
Prefect Janoah flicked the ledger shut. “I know Rafe can be charming, but fawning over our strapping Eisenwolf is ill-advised, my dear. You’ll get in trouble.”
“Yes, Prefect. Sorry, Prefect. I’ll fetch him at once-”
“No, I’ll go. Just this once let’s both pretend this never happened.”
The wolfess nodded gratefully and lifted the desk partition, allowing Janoah to pass. Linus stayed put until Janoah beckoned him through. The white wolfess asked no questions as she set the desk back and nervously waited.
Linus followed Janoah into the evidence locker, expecting nothing more than a dingy broom cupboard like at Riddle, but finding instead an immense, illuminated atrium lined with row upon row of metallic standing shelves stuffed with cardboard boxes and open trays of confiscated trinkets; swords, armour, pistols, even individual pellets bent and warped from impacting something, or someone, and everything sporting brown labels attached by string, annotated, catalogued, however tiny.
Every Howler Den had an evidence locker, but this put all else to shame. Linus supposed the wrongdoings of a whole city, of thousands of corrupt Howlers, amounted to a lot of evidence, however spurious that evidence might be.
As he followed Janoah through the labyrinth of confiscated equipment, Linus wondered if Rufus’s gear was stashed here somewhere, a sad Bloodfang helmet, armour and cloak, tucked in a box under ‘R’, perhaps.
Towards the end of the rows was an open space with a table and chairs and a magnifying glass on an armature for inspecting tricky evidence. Sitting at the table was an immense chocolate-brown wolf. He was polishing a huge two-pawed imperium sword with the gathered front of his black ALPHA cloak.
Walking over to him Janoah hissed at once, “Rafe, what’re you doing?”
“Just looking,” he sniffed.
“That’s Tristan’s sword.”
“Yeah. I saw ‘em bring it in,” Rafe said, beaming hopefully. “Can I have it?”
“What? No you can’t; it’s evidence.”
Linus stayed back amongst the shelves, if only because the coils of imperious energy springing from the brown wolf pierced him down to the core, setting his bones and muscles tingling. Linus hung onto the nearest shelf to steady his nerve in the presence of such an awesome corona.
Rafe stood up, towering over Janoah, his cloak hanging off that barrel-like chest and rolling over those mountainous shoulders. He lifted Tristan’s huge two-pawed sword with but one rippling arm and swung it effortlessly to and fro, before twirling it round like a baton.
Come the second or third twirl, Rafe fumbled the sword. It escaped his grasp, flying across the room and clattering deafeningly to the concrete floor. Cringing like a cub who’d put a football through a neighbour’s window, Rafe hurried to retrieve the sword. “I need lessons,” he freely admitted, feeling the shining blue-imperium snowflake emblem on the pommel.
“Lessons?” Janoah scoffed.
“Yeah. Sword lessons.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Rafe looked along the perfect blade, “Why ridiculous?”
Janoah marched over to her champion. “You don’t need a sword. Your suit is weapon enough. It’s more powerful than any sword.”
“But I want a sword, like everyone else!” Rafe asserted, chin high and mighty. “Like a proper Prefect.”
“You are a proper Prefect.”
“I’m not, though! I’m nothing.”
Janoah couldn’t deny it. Rafe had no official rank. In fact, he didn’t even officially exist, despite the growing rumours.
The Eisenwolf hefted the sword blade up to his broad nose and admired its terrible beauty. “I could do a better job and really impress the Alpha if I learnt to fight properly,” he claimed, “I know I could.”
Shaking her head a little, Janoah held both paws up, as if creating a wall. “I don’t know where this idea has come from, but I don’t have time for it right now.”
She breezed past Rafe, delving further into the archives beyond and casting her eyes over the rows until she located ‘Recent Additions’, whereupon she searched carefully for Linus’s belongings.
Still clinging onto his looted sword, Rafe wandered across the room until he noticed Linus. “Alright, mate?” he asked amiably, raising his chin in greeting.
Linus let go of the shelf and brushed down his cloak, trying to look presentable despite a bloody nose. “Yes, thank you.”
“Bloodfang, yeah?”
“I am, yes.”
Nodding, Rafe looked down the way at Janoah, then back to Linus again. “Jan getting you off the hook is she?”
Linus emitted a tiny scoff of surprise, but refrained to confirm Rafe’s suspicions.
“Whatcha do?” the big wolf asked pleasantly.
“Nothing. I’m innocent.”
“Ah, that’s what they all say, mate,” Rafe woofed, shouldering Tristan’s sword and moseying towards Linus. He stopped beside the little, if burly blonde wolf. “Don’t do it again, or they might send me after you,” he warned, “and I wouldn’t want to hurt a nice boy like you.”
On he walked, his fiery corona fading at Linus’s back like the sun ducking behind a cloud.
Another, less potent aura approached from the front. Lost in the rapture of the last, Linus barely noticed it until its owner spoke.
“Here,” Janoah said, chucking a pile of Howler equipment on the table, short sword, pistol, a beautiful round Bloodfang shield, the straps and buckles of it all flopping about like a dead octopus’ tentacles, “You’re lucky nobody pinched anything. They usually nick the wallet at least.”
No reply.
Noticing Linus’s vacant stare, Janoah leant on the table and said, “You get used to him.”
“What?”
; “Rafe.”
“Sorry, I….” the Howler trailed off. He looked to the exit, for Rafe, but he’d gone. “I-I-I thought he would look… uh….”
“What?” Janoah chuckled. “Like a monster?”
“No,” Linus clarified, “just… more ill.”
Surprised at this stocky little wolf’s gentle insight, Janoah explained, “Rafe’s in the rot’s good graces at the moment. He has bad days and good days, like all of us. It’s just his bad days would be the death of you or I.”
“It must be hard.”
Janoah averted her gaze a little. “He does it for Lupa, he suffers so others don’t have to, like we all do,” she asserted, slapping Linus’s shield and heading out. “Come on, Mills, I’ll walk you to the gate.”
*
Janoah pushed the black side gate open and Linus stepped through the gap, watched by the Prefects standing guard at the main gate nearby. Linus expected them to stop him, or for Josef to come running across the forecourt, waving his warrant and shouting ‘halt’.
But no, Janoah shut the gate with a squeak, barring Linus from the assorted concrete blocks pocked with windows that was ALPHA HQ’s facade; an ugly if modest building.
“I told you I would remember you,” Janoah said through the bars, making to leave. “Now we’re even. Don’t expect my help again.”
“Even?” Linus woofed after her.
The Prefect turned, one paw resting on rapier hilt, and snorted, “You’ve a short memory. Lucky for you I don’t.”
It came to Linus then, the reason for it all; the white-imperium he had given Rufus that day nearly a year ago still carried truck with his wife.
“You helped me because of the venom I gave Rufus?” Linus almost laughed.
Silence.
“But you arrested him! I-I-I thought you didn’t even care about him!”
Janoah parted company with a shouted warning, “Just stay out of trouble, Woodlouse!”