Renegade

by Donna Boyd

  I said, “The pack has been infiltrated. There are assassination plans in place for you and your heir.”

  If the information surprised him he would not, of course, reveal it. He pressed a small button on the console, and in a few moments the car pulled to the curb. He said, “I’ve enjoyed our association, Emory Hilliford. I’m sure you understand that it must now come to an end.”

  The door opened, and he turned to get out.

  I was weary to the bone, cold and hungry and aching, and I was not sure I had the strength to even form the next words. But I had to ask.

  “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know I wouldn’t kill him?”

  He merely smiled. “Why, Dr. Hilliford,” he said, “I’ve read your books.”

  He got out of the car, and I never saw him again. Within the hour, Alexander Devoncroix was dead.

  I pushed my way through the gathering of mourners in the anteroom outside the chamber of the Park Avenue mansion where the leader of the pack and his mate lay in state. The word had been put out that they had been struck down by a human driving an automobile while crossing Central Park. I did not know at that time whether it was true or not. But I knew it had not been an accident.

  The air was thick and sour smelling and the faces I passed were sharp and white with narrowed eyes. The well-dressed bodies were restless and bristling, uneasy in their human forms and bound to them, it seemed, by only the thinnest threads of consciousness. The leader of the pack was dead. They were without anchor, without purpose, barely tethered to life. I could feel the outer edges of a thousand years of civilization begin to crack and peel away.

  Two guards were on either side of me and another behind. Though I had come of my own volition, I never would have gotten that close to Nicholas Devoncroix in this time of crisis without them. I do not know what I would have done had he refused to see me. I did not know what I faced when I stood before him.

  We stopped before a tall, ornately carved door. One of the guards opened it and stepped back. I went through alone.

  The room was a study of some sort, with a desk and a computer, some formal furniture drawn up before a fireplace. The fireplace was dark and cold. It was four o’clock in the morning and the room was lit only by two lamps whose yellow pools of light did not meet. Nicholas Devoncroix stood before the window alone, looking out.

  In little over five hours the New York Stock Exchange would open. Already the Tokyo market was battling to right itself. Telephones were ringing in human offices, on human nightstands, in human coat pockets all over the world. Among the lupinotuum the news would have been almost instantaneous. They would have fallen to their knees with the impact of loss. Planes would lose their pilots, machinery would lose its operators, cars would lose their drivers for seconds, perhaps even as much as a minute at a time. The newspapers would be filled with reports of unrelated incidents around the globe. Among their species, the attachment to the pack leader was a mysterious but indisputable phenomenon, and his loss was a physical thing.

  Shops would close, industry would be suspended, banks would not open, companies would lock their doors as thousands upon thousands of lupinotuum followed the trail of their grief to Castle Devoncroix. In Paris and London and Rome and Los Angeles, the loup garoux, in a desperate attempt to ease their anxiety, would take to the natural forms, running madly through the parks and beaches and eventually the city streets. There would be mayhem, mass terror, colossal losses.

  Except of course, that the natural transition of power had been designed to prevent precisely such a disaster. The reason that the streets of New York did not now run red with blood was because Elise and Alexander Devoncroix had spent almost a century preparing for this moment.

  “You have courage, human,” Nicholas said without turning. “I will grant you that. But as I recall, a lack of reckless courage was never one of your failings.”

  I said, “I am sorry for your loss.” The words seemed at that moment small and frail and human, and they fell into the shadows and were swallowed up.

  Nicholas spoke with his back to me, his gaze upon the darkened streets below. “You were with my father tonight.”

  “You know I didn’t kill him.”

  “How do I know that? Because you say it’s true?” His voice was conversational, almost matter of fact. I did not respond.

  He turned then and walked toward me in a leisurely fashion. His expression was calm and perfectly composed, but his eyes were dark with grief, and had a hard glitter. He stood before me for a moment, and then, with no warning whatsoever, he drew back his arm and backhanded me hard across the face. I staggered back and tasted blood, but I knew he could have easily broken my jaw had he wished to.

  He repeated, so lowly and with such intensity it was almost a growl. “How do I know that, human?”

  I wiped the blood from my split lip, holding his gaze. “I was meant for another assignment,” I said deliberately. “You know the one I mean.”

  I surprised him enough to cause his eyebrows to draw together briefly, almost infinitesimally, with a flare of quickly suppressed rage. He stood less than a foot from me. I could feel his breath on my face. He said, in a near whisper that reverberated around the room, “Your stench was in every corner of the laboratory. I know what you were meant to do. I know what you did. I know what you are.”

  Suddenly his hand shot out and grasped my throat, slamming me back against the wall so hard that I saw stars. His fingers closed around my trachea like a vise, squeezing off my breath until my airway was the size of a straw. Instinctively and futilely I clawed at his hand. Wheezing noises came from my throat. His voice came to me through the roaring tunnel of pressure in my ears.

  “Do you know why you are still alive, human? There is one reason and one reason only. Honor.”

  Abruptly he released my throat and air came flooding back. I coughed and my broken ribs stabbed. I could still feel the iron imprint of his fingers on my skin.

  He stood staring at me for another long moment, while the rage and the contempt in his eyes faded, slowly, into something cold and oddly resigned. “Half a millennium ago,” he said, “my ancestor issued an edict declaring a truce with your people.” He turned away from me, moving across the room. His voice sounded tired. “By this time tomorrow that edict will be revoked. Count yourself fortunate you found me tonight.”

  For a moment I didn’t understand what he meant. And it was another moment before I could speak. “You can’t mean … you can’t mean to reinstate the Edict of Separation. It was overruled by Eudora’s vow! Your father never would have sanctioned this. You know he wouldn’t!”

  “And you of all people know I have no choice!” he practically spat the words. “Until we can determine what deviance of a mismating allowed this …” he struggled with the words. “This monster to be spawned, it could happen again. I will be on a plane for Alaska to deliver the edict to the Council before noon tomorrow. I will protect the pack.”

  I pushed away from the wall. “You’re playing into their hands.” My voice was hoarse and shallow of breath. I fought to make my words clear, pronouncing them through teeth gritted against the pain. “This is exactly the kind of chaos they wanted to ignite.”

  He looked at me sharply, eyes narrowing. “Who?”

  Of course I did not have to say it. He knew precisely who I meant.

  I said simply, “Don’t do this thing. Don’t let history remember you this way.”

  His eyes never left mine as he said very quietly, “Look around you. Look at what has been wrought in less than forty-eight hours. The leader of the pack is dead at the hands of a human. Three of the most brilliant minds this world has ever known have been slaughtered while trying to protect an aberrant freak of nature that never should have been born. You are wanted for murder by humans and treachery by your comrades. Who knows where this night will end for either of us? And all because one of my race once loved a member of yours. Don’t tell me how history should remember me,
human. My history was written long before I was born.”

  I said, “I came to deliver a warning. I tried to do the same for your father, and I was proven right. The pack has been infiltrated at the highest levels by members of the Dark Brotherhood. Some of them are human.” I did not flinch from his gaze. “I should know. Don’t get on that plane.”

  I turned and made my way to the door. I had no idea how far I would get, whether I would be allowed to leave the city, the building, or even the room. By that time it didn’t matter.

  I had almost reached the door before he spoke. He said, “Where is Lara?”

  I could not meet his eyes when I answered. There was too much pain, such a great ocean wave of pain and shame. So I spoke without turning. “She has killed her father and gone feral. She did it to save a human. You are right. Our history was written before we were born.”

  I left him then, and he let me go. There was nothing more I could do. I had reached the end of my story.

  The next day, Nicholas Devoncroix got on the plane.

  ___________________________

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Present

  Rolfe remarked, “An interesting study in contrasts, that Nicholas. Brilliant and ruthless by all accounts, but forever a victim of wayward, impulsive emotions. What a pity he was cut down so soon. I would have liked to have known him.”

  He took up his glass. “What is this Edict of Separation?”

  “It’s a pack law that, among other things, forbids social interaction with humans. It removes the penalty for killing humans, and enforces a strict and permanent separation between the species. It hasn’t been in effect since Queen Eudora. I think it was meant only to be a temporary measure, until all the evidence could be brought to light, but Nicholas died before he could revoke it, if that was ever his intention. It remains in effect to this day.”

  Rolfe nodded. “That explains a good deal, of course. How did you know there was a bomb on Nicholas’s plane?”

  “I didn’t. That’s the irony. I knew only that the prince had planned to assassinate the pack leader and his heir but I didn’t have the resources to discover how. If Nicholas hadn’t hated me so, if he hadn’t been so anxious to invoke the Edict, matters might have turned out very differently for us all.” He paused. “Or maybe not. We’ll never know.”

  Rolfe said casually, “I have heard he’s still alive.”

  Emory shrugged. “For years afterwards rumors persisted that he had survived the attack, but he never surfaced. Personally, I can see the appeal of the rumor. Even I like to comfort myself now and then by imagining that he might one day re-emerge, like the lost dauphin, the last of the great Devoncroix leaders, and put everything back to rights again. But of course what I’m really wishing for is the return of an era. And that is gone forever.”

  Rolfe tapped his index finger against his chin, nodding thoughtfully. “So it is. But you must admit, it was an empire built on sand. It was bound to fall.”

  “You may be right. The pack struggled to right itself valiantly for a time. There were battles for succession, brief victories, quick defeats. It was as Alexander said—the loup garoux are a volatile culture who have depended throughout history on two things for stability: a strong central leadership, and the balance of the Brotherhood. But now the Brotherhood of the Dark Moon was in as much disarray as the pack itself. They lost their ideals and their cohesion and devolved into little more than a gang of thugs. The pack made no effort to control them because, under the atmosphere of general lawlessness that ruled the pack, their activities often proved a useful distraction.

  “Over the next several years commerce with humans began to disintegrate. Businesses reduced the wages of their human employees, and in some cases, their numbers. Pack funds, which once were so brilliantly and centrally managed, fell under the control of a dozen greedy despots. Banks began to struggle, and eventually to fail. Industries abandoned quality control on goods manufactured for human consumption, and research and development for new technologies struggled to find clear direction. An empire that took centuries to build does not collapse overnight, but after over a decade of infighting, disruption and moral disintegration, the center could not hold. And the loup garoux, fighting among themselves for their own greedy share of what was left, were content to let the humans clean up the mess. For the first time in six hundred years a generation of loup garoux reached maturity without reciting Eudora’s vow.”

  Rolfe’s smile was not so much amused as amazed. “And all of this even though the hybrid, who was both the Devoncroix’s and the Fasburg’s greatest fear, was quietly locked away in a remote Sanctuary in the Andes somewhere. Surely this is a fine example of being unable to outrun one’s destiny.”

  “I suppose.”

  Rolfe regarded him speculatively. “Regrets, Professor? You fell very far from grace indeed, I should imagine. You were wanted by both the human authorities and your fellow brethren and both of your protectors were dead. I find it a wonder that you survived at all.”

  Emory said, “Oddly enough, I owe my survival to the same chaos and lack of leadership that brought down both the pack and the Dark Brotherhood. In the confusion that followed the deaths of Prince Fasburg and Alexander Devoncroix, I was able to slip away. Of course I have lived like a renegade since then, traveling from city to city, from country to country under one of a dozen sets of false papers. I have worked for tips as a tour guide in Egypt and slept on subways in Manhattan and bussed tables in London. I’ve lived this way for so long I’m not sure I know anything else anymore. I have many regrets. But they are not what you think.”

  “Indeed?” Rolfe topped off Emory’s wine glass with a flourish, his manner inviting.

  Emory took up the glass, holding it once again with both hands, and took a sip before resting his back against the chair again. He was thoughtful for a moment, considering his words. “I did have a few friends left among the humans in the scientific world, and without a body the American police were unable to press a case against me, so that many of my human colleagues never knew of my connection with the troubles in New York. Occasionally I would be able to get lab time, although I never dared stay too long in one place. I began to examine the slide I had stolen from the lab in New York, and to test the blood on my jacket. Human technology was years away from allowing me to read the data I had collected from their computers, so it was a laborious process. But eventually I isolated a peculiar organism in David’s blood and began to understand, in part, how the Devoncroix Effect had been adapted to him.”

  Rolfe lifted an interested eyebrow, but Emory took his time, sipping his wine. “For centuries,” he said, “scientists believed that the Black Death that decimated the human population of Europe was a bacteria-borne illness carried by fleas. But recent schools of thought suggest it was more likely a hemorrhagic virus of the Filoviridae type. Ebola and Marburg viruses belong to that group. David appears to be a carrier for a unique Filoviridae virus that can act as the trigger for hemorrhagic fever in humans, as well as for what is now called the Scourge in loup garoux—the sudden, inexplicable malformation and death of newborn cubs. The virus is spread by the exchange of bodily fluids—blood, most often, but occasionally semen, saliva and even sweat—and can be passed between humans and loup garoux, acting differently on each species as it incubates within the host. In the loup garoux, it will mean the stillbirth of ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of all offspring. In humans, it can remain inactive in the body for years, or even decades. Symptoms begin slowly, but once the disease process takes hold the victim will experience bleeding diathesis, neuromuscular degeneration, fever, a rapid disintegration of internal organs and a painful death. During this time he is highly contagious. Once the virus enters the bloodstream, in both species, it is there forever.”

  Rolfe maintained a respectful silence for a moment. “And when did you become symptomatic, Professor?”

  Emory sipped again from the glass. “A month or two ago. There w
as no way I could have escaped the contagion; I was covered in David’s blood the night we were attacked at the lab. I am entering the last stages, which will be far more rapid than the first.”

  “I see.” His tone was speculative. “In the fourteenth century, it took three years to reduce the population of Europe by half. In this day of global travel, massive overcrowding, and random violence I would estimate the entire human population could be reduced by ninety percent in a fraction of that time. The loup garoux will be gone within a generation. Fascinating. Nature, it would appear, allows for but one dominant species at a time.”

  Emory added softly, “And nature always maintains the balance.”

  Rolfe smiled. “So it does.” And abruptly, he was all business again. “Now tell me of the lovely Lara. She recovered her senses after that awful night, I take it. You are in contact?”

  “I’ve told you, no. Because of me, she was forced into an act of patricide of the most heinous sort. She will never forgive me, and I wouldn’t ask her to.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Her family has property all over the world. I imagine she has been able to hold on to some of it. Certainly she has friends, both human and loup garou, who will protect her should she need it, and hide her if necessary. One rarely hears her name any more.”

  “It would appear she has fared the best of all, then.”

  Emory took another long and careful sip of his wine. “Unless, of course, you count the death of her lover, the murder of her father, and the betrayal of the one man to whom she swore her fealty for life.”

  There was a small glint of amusement in Rolfe’s eyes. “Touché.” Then, “The hybrid David. Where did you see him last?”

  “Seriously, Rolfe, you really must pay attention. I told you, I put him into the back of a car with Lara in November of 1999 and I have neither seen nor heard from him since then.”