The blood drying on their skin, excitement rolling off them in waves, they all rode the walnut-and brass-accented elevator car to the first floor and exited the rear of the building beneath the cantilever extension, where guards had assembled the thirteen.
Dressed in light olive drab fatigues, the thirteen men huddled together, shivering, nervously eyeing the muzzles of the dozen H&K MP5 submachine guns aimed their way. Their eyes were wide at the thought of their situation, which they could barely comprehend. Twenty-four hours earlier they’d been on the street in various urban centers, living out of Dumpsters or in and out of shelters, some eking out a bare living by “canning,” collecting cans in huge trash bags for the tiny cash return. Suddenly chloroformed and bagged like carcasses, renditioned in their own country, they had awakened here in a tiny cell, naked in a cold climate, supplied with thin fatigues and cheap sneakers. Then they’d been forced to bathe, dress in the generic clothes, and had been assembled under this roof as snowflakes floated in on the breeze and melted on their heads and hands.
Now they had become the main attraction for the ritual.
Lansing and his group spread out in front of the thirteen, staring at them with grins spreading across their faces. The general nodded at his guards, and every single one took a step forward and snapped their gun muzzles upward.
The captive men, startled, groaned and started to chatter, question their fate, complain. Some began to pray. One shouted obscenities. Fear and anger swept over the group, and there was a ripple of movement, as if they might rush their captors in a last-ditch attempt to escape whatever fate awaited them.
But then their voices faded and went silent. Their muscles may have tightened, but not in readiness. No, their muscles tightened in a classic fight-or-flight dilemma as they tried to process what they were witnessing.
Lansing had said, “The Lupercalia continues, gentlemen. All hail.”
“All hail!”
The generals spoke in unison.
They had started to strip out of their jumpsuits, first unzipping and dropping them to the ground, then stepping out of them, naked, their penises tumescent and bursting blue in the cold air. As they stood, their erections facing the thirteen confused and frightened men. Eyes were wide in shock. But disgust was written in their faces as well as the shock. And yet, they seemed fascinated by the sight of these naked men approaching.
Perhaps not so much fascinated as hypnotized, they watched as the men and their erections advanced.
Close, closer…
Still fascinated, but now by the men’s eyes, the pupils of which seemed to change colors and swirl like kaleidoscopes.
Fascinated…until they spotted coarse hair beginning to sprout up and down arms, backs, and across chests. Hands sprouting fur and wicked claws. Heads blurring and re-coalescing as pointed snouts filled with fangs, and long, lolling tongues.
The thirteen men screamed and bellowed, shrinking away from the impossible sight. Their bodies collided in the panic of trying to put something between themselves and these monsters that were manifesting before them.
At this point, the guards fired long bursts into the air, over the men’s heads, herding them out from under the cantilever roof. They needed no spur, however, as the half-man, half-wolf creatures lunged for them on hind legs tipped with wolf paws, their fearsome growls filling the space and echoing through the nearby woods.
The men—who had become prey, pure and simple—broke ranks and made for the tree line.
All except one who was brought down almost immediately by two of the fanged monsters. The victors of that encounter began to tear into their victim even as he shrieked in excruciating pain, their claws and fangs making short work of his thin clothes and grinding through bone and sinew, releasing a gush of blood and, soon, intestines and organs.
The wolf-men feasted, their snouts dappled in crimson. Growls and drool escaping, their jaws sawed through limbs and sought out the tastiest bits as the human expired under them.
Of the others, two thirds reached the trees. Four were snagged by snarling wolf-men and batted to the ground, where the fangs went to work amidst screams that were cut off, one by one, as the humans died.
One lone wolf gave chase past the tree line and into the forest, his howls marking his progress as he tracked the homeless men who fled, crashing through the evergreen trunks in a headlong rush that lacked control… Lacked control and any hope of survival, for soon the only partially sated wolf-men had rejoined the chase and howled their joy at racing through the frigid woods, the scent of terrified human like a fine aroma in their nostrils and adrenaline like wine in their veins. And the moon above spreading her arms to encompass them all.
Soon all the prey had been felled, and all the wolves had fed to near-bursting.
Lansing alone knew about an experiment that was taking place, but he would share that news when the time came.
They returned to the lodge on four paws, their brown, black, and gray fur spattered with blood and brains, their tongues still tingling with the taste of live prey.
The generals of the Wolfclaw group forced a change despite the moon’s loving call to continue romping. Their stomachs sated, the next phase of the festival was upon them. They showered then rode the elevator back up, reconvening a while later in a special lounge, where an even dozen long-limbed women of luscious curves and movie-star looks waited, their bodies draped over leather armchairs and sofas in various stages of undress. Sheer fabric barely covered ample assets as strategic strip-lighting highlighted glossy hair in a multitude of shades.
The generals entered the lounge, their erections raging.
The werewolf gene amplified natural libido, and these men had achieved their ranks through sheer ego, guts, and ruthlessness—their libido was already heightened. The realigned DNA of the change channeled all their qualities into their bloodstream, and granted them an insatiable stamina and desire most Viagra users would have found enviable.
“Enjoy the final phase of the Lupercalia, gentlemen,” Lansing said, though it was unnecessary. His colleagues were already pairing up, doubling, tripling, with their dates of the moment, slender scarlet-tipped female hands reaching out for swollen male members, faces and tongues meeting, limbs beginning to intertwine already, the groupings blurring into tableaus of sighs, groans, and grunts.
Before long the room had become a series of bacchanalian chains as bodies lay end to end and every other possible way, their mouths and genitalia joined in seemingly countless permutations. Soon the various rhythms of the fluid couplings filled the air along with the heady scents of musk and sweat, sex and testosterone. Every so often orgasmic screams erupted from complex mountains of flesh. Here and there blood flowed—in this company, no bodily fluid was off-limits.
The wolves fed their other appetite in this way, a secret update of the long tradition of the Lupercalia which had evolved soon after Roman popes had begun to decry the original.
Tomorrow the generals would meet for important Wolfclaw business, for show and tell, and for entertainment.
But tonight—tonight they would fuck like rutting animals.
Bastone
“Okay, Billy-Grey, okay,” he said into the phone.
The Don rolled his eyes. The large screen across from his bed showed three chicks in some sort of lezzie threesome that he’d just decided he should see more often. Tongues and twats and asses, the occasional boob, and some dildos. It was easier to place yourself in the action if there wasn’t some tattooed hung asshole to ruin the beauty of the staging.
One of his boys had got this shit from a local rental shop (they still had them here?) and the stuff would have to do until his own collection arrived.
“Yeah, I get it. You’re all nervous now because this doctor chick knows too much. What did she do?” He chuckled. “She really is a busybody, eh? Fuck’s my guy doin’ in the library, huh?” He’d have to ask Robb about that. Still, this puttana had no right to insert her nose into his business
.
One of the chicks was wielding a monster pink dildo up there. Jeez.
He listened to the pencil-pushin’ Indian a little more.
“Okay, man, I’m gonna send one of my guys to give you a little bit more protection, in case the chick’s cop friends come callin’, all right? You okay with that, chief?”
He nodded along with the acceptance and gratitude as if the fucker could see him.
“Yeah, sure, I gotta protect my investment, yeah? No worries on your end. Your worries are just about over, believe me. When I take over, I take care of stuff, know what I mean?”
“Okay. Yup, gonna send him now.” Fuck off, Injun Joe.
The Don watched raptly as the pink dildo appeared and disappeared, doing its thing on one chick while the other licked the dildo wielder. Note to self: get more of this lezzie shit.
When it was over and all three women had loudly proclaimed their happy endings, he shut off the screen and dialed his phone. He’d expected to find no signal up here, but no, they had plenty of towers. Maybe this wasn’t middle of Fuckville, after all.
“Hey, Johnny? Lissen. When you got a free moment, take Marty with you and visit the Tree guy. Yeah, make it like we discussed. Then make that second trip, also like we discussed. Yeah, I’ll give Robb the word.” He shut down the phone.
Just like the old days.
Well, the days of his father and grandfather.
He wondered what else he could find locally. Sure, this stuff was hot, but he was in the mood for something nastier. He was looking for something more intense. Maybe he should have asked Johnny to bring a camera.
He shrugged, then turned his girl-porn on again. It would do, for now…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wolfclaw
Somewhere in Northern Minnesota
General Lansing entered the conference room with his assistant in tow.
The other members of the Wolfclaw Group had taken their places around the custom mahogany conference table. The paneled room was lit by way of natural light provided by a row of electronically controlled skylights above and a narrow strip of stained glass panels just below ceiling level, another nod to the lodge’s Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired design.
Careful scrutiny would have discovered the stained glass panels depicted various werewolf scenarios. Hunting and devouring human prey was a repetitive theme. Red glass fragments abounded, their color adding blood to the scenes.
Lansing had commissioned the conference room stained glass himself, and then the artist had disappeared. He’d become the lodge’s first hunt subject. Lansing had been careful in his dealings with outsiders, and the lodge’s true purpose had been carefully protected. As far as the outside world was concerned, the lodge was a private sporting club.
Which was true in so many ways, Lansing reflected.
He addressed the group. “Gentlemen, thank you for being punctual. We have had a very relaxing few days, and we still have one night of festivities. New women are being shuttled in as we speak, so we can all look forward to more stimulating relaxation, but today we have some business to discuss.”
A paneled screen slid open on the wall behind him. A metal-lined door behind the panels rose with a smooth hydraulic hiss, and the others could see a large chamber behind it.
“I’d like to welcome you to our future control center,” Lansing said, pointing.
The others mumbled their approval. They couldn’t see much yet, but at first glance the chamber’s contents appeared impressive.
“Follow me, gentlemen,” he said.
They entered the Control Room and fanned out in both directions after the door hissed closed behind them. Four long tables holding banks of electronics in rackmounts alternated with cockpit-like cocoons that held sleek padded leather chairs. In front of each station was a trio of flat screens, a keyboard, and a joystick mounted on an adjustable swivel-arm. Comm gear lay on the table next to each keyboard.
“Gentlemen, as you all know, the United States Air Force maintains drone control centers at bases in Nevada and Florida. From those remote areas, human operators pilot Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk drones—or Remotely Piloted Aircraft, as we now refer to them—from relative safety and comfort. Such control facilities have allowed us to strike at our enemies in more countries than I care to name, a list you all are quite well aware of. RPAs have rather quickly taken over much of our air war against terrorist factions dedicated to killing Americans, and we all laud the efforts of these units.”
He looked at each member of his loyal group in turn.
His eyes hardened.
“However,” he continued, “on one day the date of which is still undetermined, pilots seated at the controls in front of you will capture command of this country’s drone squadrons and, together with a special squadron built to our specifications, the drone program will become the center of Wolfclaw’s coup, and the government will be ours.”
The assembled generals mumbled in gleeful agreement as Lansing pointed with pride at the high-tech command module. Then they broke into a rousing round of applause.
“Gentlemen, we have left the country in the hands of politicians much too long. Once under our control we can begin to return it to its former greatness. Once under our control, the world will again fear our nation and come to us on bended knee for the right to exist, to survive, for we will hold the key to survival, and we will be ruthless with its use.”
The assembled generals clapped again.
Lansing wondered if they’d clap so enthusiastically if he were to go on to reveal how he planned to bring to fruition the long-term Wolfpaw plan to institute a Fourth Reich, the same plan created in the final days of the Second World War. A plan that reached back even farther in time, but which had borne its first fruit at the very end of the Third Reich’s existence.
As the Axis fell, the Werwolf Division had been charged ostensibly with harassing the advancing Allies, but it had also been the spearhead of a global conspiracy to infiltrate the armed forces—and eventually the governments—of those allied against the Reich. Wolfpaw had simply been a convenient vessel for the late twentieth century version of the plan. They’d done well, lasting into the twenty-first century, but now they had stepped aside as an entity and given way to their backing entity, which was Lansing’s baby—a coalition of werewolf generals who not only admired the Roman and Germanic way, but who also thought their way of ruling would be best for their country.
Lansing smiled as they finished applauding.
Schlosser had been a misguided fool. A useful fool, to be sure, but a fool nonetheless. His experiments to increase a werewolf’s tolerance to silver had yielded good results, as had those of his ancestor who’d been funded by the Nazi war machine. But the younger Schlosser had been a warped sexual deviant who’d preferred sex to the true glory offered by the werewolf gene.
And he’d not really understood that the true improvement of the lycan gene wasn’t the mere tolerance of silver, but the strange and thus far misunderstood magic achieved by one Joseph Badger, an unlikely scientist-alchemist awash in a sea of foolish beliefs and practices who had, despite his lower than low origins as a so-called Native American, somehow still managed to concoct a ritual with historic implications, a ritual which somehow blended two previously divergent types of magick.
A ritual that no one had so far been able to duplicate.
Lansing hoped to correct the situation.
“Yes, gentlemen,” Lansing continued as the applause died down, “we have a holy mission to complete. You see before you some of the tools we will use, but as you know there are more twists and turns to our game than the obvious.” He scanned the room, meeting their eyes one by one. “Any questions?”
“One here,” said Heissen, the Marine general. “An update on the unfortunate leak discovered just a few days ago?”
Lansing’s expression resembled that of someone who had swallowed a whole lemon.
“Heissen, I was getting to that.�
� He glared at them all, irritated by the fact that they chose to focus on the irrelevant negatives rather than the glorious positives. “We’ve located the individual responsible for passing the information to the whistleblower. Realize, we have layers of involvement at each level. One bad apple, as you know, sours the bushel. We have him. Our team should be dealing with the whistleblower any time now, a low-life by the name of Wineacre, though at first he managed unfortunately to escape our cordon. You can be certain those responsible for allowing that to happen have paid for their incompetence.”
He started to herd the group back out of the as yet unused control room.
“Since you asked, I have a surprise for you. Follow me to the discipline room, and you’ll have a chance to meet the leak himself. I recommend you bring a bib. It will be messy.”
He walked behind them as they chuckled and exited, and the metal door closed behind them, then the screen.
Lansing heaved a sigh of relief. Having a scapegoat handy had been a stroke of genius, allowing him to avoid challenges to his command ability and agenda. And he did not want ay challenges.
As the group headed for the elevator, he licked his dry lips.
Soon they would be awash in hot blood.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Franco Lupo
December 1945
Father Tranelli!
Franco had always thought the priest had been killed. By a wolf, a bullet, or drink.
The priest was not wearing his collar. And he didn’t look as drunk as Franco remembered.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed, boy?” The priest was livid, as well as in obvious pain. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
Franco bristled. “I should be asking you the same. Why are you here? I thought you were dead. What’s going on?” His wine-soaked voice echoed along the steel bulkheads.
“Lower your voice! Sei matto?”
“I’m not crazy, I am angry.” He didn’t lower his voice.
Too late, he heard a low growl from the top of the staircase.
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