Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3)

by Brad Magnarella

  “What was it?”

  He looked around, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “A UFO.”

  “UFO,” I repeated.

  “This past summer I was out checking my traplines. Nighttime. One in the morning, or thereabouts. I’d just crossed the Platt River when this beam shot down from the sky. I knew right off it was a UFO cause that’s what they do—they shoot down beams, usually to take a person. Had one to grab John Foster back in ’58.”

  No wonder no one had been listening to him. When I turned away, he grabbed my arm. “But this time the UFO sent something down instead, cause I heard it.” He bared his browned teeth, then opened his mouth wide and let out a screeching roar. I winced from the horrid sound. “Just like that. And that was the same night that boy Connor disappeared.”

  I hesitated. Maybe Jasper had seen something. “And where was this?”

  “About a mile northwest of the Platt,” he said. “No wait, or was it over by the Black River?” He shook his head as if to rattle his memories around before giving up and throwing back the shot.

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  He hacked and drew his sleeve across his mouth before nodding sagely. “You can’t take down a UFO with bullets. I had an uncle to try once. Bullets bounced right off on ’count of the magnets they got protecting those ships. Hey, uh, mind spotting me a five for another one.”

  I filed away what he’d told me about the roar and even the light beam. Maybe there was something to it and maybe there wasn’t. Our best lead was still with the wolf shifters, which meant I needed to find the she-wolf and get her back to her pack. Ms. Welch had one day left, tops.

  Jasper’s fingers dug into my arm. “Hey, you know that gal?”

  “Which one?” I asked, following his gaze toward the end of the bar.

  “Never seen her before, but she sure’s been checking me out.” Jasper grinned and waggled his dirty fingers at her.

  The attractive young woman standing in the shadows wore her hair in a single dark braid that she’d draped over the front of a shoulder. She was dressed in hunting clothes that looked too large on her and were at odds with her smooth, clean face. She wasn’t checking out Jasper.

  Her dark eyes were fixed squarely on me.

  Seeing I’d spotted her, she smiled and brought a beer mug to her lips. Above the rim, her eyes flashed gold.

  I pushed myself from the bar.

  I’d just found the she-wolf.

  14

  I kept my eyes on the she-wolf as I edged my way toward the end of the bar. When I was almost to her, she set her beer down and took a step back. I tensed to give chase, but she was only making room in the long wedge of shadow between the bar and the wall of a back corridor.

  She’d been waiting for me.

  “Nadie?” I said, arriving in front of her.

  But I didn’t have to ask. Though she was in human form, the fecund scent of the she-wolf clung to her. The wolf in me began to respond, forcing me to shift my stance. When Nadie smiled, her dark eyes seemed to penetrate my visor. She could sense what I was feeling.

  “You’re not going to shoot me are you, Captain Wolfe?”

  She was referring to our earlier encounter. “How do you know my name?”

  Her gaze cut toward the booth where the mayor was sitting. With her preternatural hearing, Nadie had eavesdropped on our conversation, which had started with the mayor addressing me by title and name.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I don’t trust him either.”

  “It’s time to go home.”

  “I just got here.”

  “Yeah, in someone’s stolen clothes. And I’m guessing the money you bought that drink with wasn’t yours either. This is a small town. It won’t take someone long to see what you’re wearing and realize you’re a thief.”

  I was being harsher than I needed to, but my wolf urges were surging like a gunning engine. It was the scent coming off her, the naked way she was appraising me. She was flashing all kinds of signals, mainly that she was mine for the taking. But I belonged to Daniela.

  Nadie laughed. “They’re too busy looking at my face. Anyway, do you really think I have to buy my own drinks?”

  I peered over a shoulder at the men lined up across the bar. All but one or two were watching her with glazed eyes as if nothing else existed. Probably not the first time she’d come here.

  “Aranck and the pack want you to return. You’re jeopardizing their safety by bringing them this close to town. Hell, you almost got your father killed earlier.”

  “My father’s a tyrant.”

  I seized her wrist. “Let’s go.”

  Instead of resisting, she stepped closer. “But I haven’t gotten what I came for.”

  I imagined myself looking into Daniela’s eyes until my love for her overwhelmed anything the wolf in me was feeling. “Aranck told me why you came,” I said, speaking above her left ear. “It’s a fool’s errand.”

  She moved closer until our thighs were brushing. “Why?”

  “Because I’m engaged,” I growled.

  “To someone who loves you?”

  “Yes.”

  She raised a dark eyebrow that I imagined morphing into the exquisite markings on her face when she shifted. “All of you?”

  “Enough of me,” I shot back.

  I bristled at letting myself be drawn into an exchange, but she’d hit on something touchy. The Blue Wolf was a temporary condition. There was no reason for Daniela to worry about me, fear for me. I didn’t want her fearing, period. She’d had enough of that lately.

  Nadie smiled as if I’d conceded something.

  “C’mon,” I said, tugging her harder than I meant to.

  Instead of going through the roadhouse and risking problems with the barflies for making off with their eye candy, I pulled Nadie down the back corridor, past the kitchen and bathrooms, and through a door that led outside. We stepped into a yard littered with snow-dusted propane tanks and other detritus that backed up to the lapping shore of the bay.

  When I closed the door behind us, Nadie twisted free. I’d become so used to her as a woman that her shifter strength surprised me—and excited my wolf all over again.

  “You’re going back,” I stated.

  “What did my father promise for my return?”

  Knowing she would sense a lie, I replied, “Information on the recent killings.”

  “My father isn’t the only one with information.”

  “You know something?”

  “I’ll give you two choices. We can fight right here—dominate me, and you can take me back to the pack. Or we meet on White Ridge at low sun, alone, no weapons, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I looked at her for a long moment before glancing at the pale smudge beyond the ceiling of gray clouds that continued to spew snow. When Nadie saw what I was doing, she laughed.

  “That would be in one hour.”

  “Why not now?” I snarled.

  “Because I have things to do.”

  I wasn’t going to fight her, and she knew that. But if I tried to carry her to the van, a fight was exactly what I was going to get. “There’s an innocent woman whose life is in danger,” I said. “The sooner I know what we’re facing, the sooner my team can help her.”

  “White Ridge. Low sun.”

  “And you’ll tell me what you know?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I watched to see if she was lying, but she showed none of the normal signs. Then again, she wasn’t normal.

  “And you’ll let me escort you to your pack?”

  Her eyes remained steady on mine, as if they were rooted deep in the earth.

  When she didn’t answer, I asked, “Where on White Ridge?”

  “Follow your nose, Wolfe.”

  When she turned, I caught my lupine eyes dropping to her powerful hips as if drawn there by a magnetic force. I pulled my gaze away, but not before she peered at me over a shoulde
r, eyes smiling beautifully, dangerously. She disappeared around the corner of the roadhouse. I shouldn’t have let her go, but my heart was pounding, my head buzzing. I was verging on control loss.

  “C’mon, Jason,” I muttered. “Get it to-fucking-gether.”

  I considered having Rusty keep an eye on her, but Berglund was still absent, and I wanted Rusty concentrating on the workaround in the event Beam recalled us. Anyway, the wolf in me knew she’d be at White Ridge. I rounded the roadhouse’s other side and found Sarah waiting. When she spotted me, she cleaned the snow from her glasses and put them back on.

  “Do you mind telling me what you were doing?”

  “I overheard someone at the bar saying he’d seen the Prod 1. The guy turned out to be unreliable, an old drunk. Claimed it was a UFO, but he also described a blue beam of light from the sky and an animal roar on the night of Connor’s disappearance. Could be worth looking into.”

  “I’ll query the database for like examples,” she said.

  “I also found our she-wolf.”

  Her eyes snapped back to me. “You did? Where is she?”

  Though Nadie’s scent lingered in the air, she had disappeared from sight. “Gone for now, but we made plans to meet up in an hour. She claims to know something about our killer.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “She’ll keep the appointment, yeah.” And if she doesn’t, I thought, that scent won’t be hard to track. It’s burned into all the wrong parts of my brain. “If you’re asking if I think she’ll try to hurt me, no, I’m not getting that.” Seduction was another question. That was clearly her game.

  “Where are we meeting?” Sarah asked.

  “White Ridge. But she’s insisting I go alone.”

  Her head tilted. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” I lied. “Maybe because I’m part lupine, like her. But I’ll have Rusty overhead. I’ll want you and Yoofi stationed where we parked earlier. When I bring Nadie past, I’ll have you take up the rear position and provide backup at the hill again.” Regardless of what Nadie told me, I was taking her back to Aranck. We didn’t need to be on the bad side of a pack of shifters.

  “Any word on Olaf?” I asked.

  “He’ll be delivered this evening at 2000 hours,” Sarah replied distractedly. “You don’t want Takara on backup too?”

  I thought about our meeting with Mayor Grimes.

  “I have another job for her,” I said.

  Back at the lodge, I went in search of Yoofi to see what he’d been able to divine. I found him pacing on the back porch, cigar smoke trailing behind him. He was talking to his wooden idol in Congolese and jabbing it with a finger.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Wolfe,” he said when he saw me. “This whole time I have been trying to get Dabu’s attention. I drink, I smoke, I dance, but Dabu will not speak. He has gone deep into the underworld. He believes his brothers and sisters are planning to take the Dea-Dep and return it to Muluku. Ooh, he is very afraid right now.”

  I clenched my jaw. “You told me he wouldn’t run again.”

  “I meant run from something up here. Down there is another story.”

  I didn’t have time for this. “Tell him that if he doesn’t help you divine what we’re facing up here, you’ll pledge allegiance to Udu.”

  “I already tried this, and he doesn’t care. His underworld is more important to him right now than Yoofi.”

  “Then go bigger. Tell him you’ll give your staff to Muluku.”

  “I cannot do that, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dabu is a very funny god, yes. Makes Yoofi laugh many times. But if I tried to give the staff to Muluku, knowing he would use it to take the underworld back, Dabu would end me. Like that.” He looked down at the idol and nodded solemnly. “Dabu just told me that this is true.”

  “Can you even cast through the staff anymore?”

  “Let me see.” He raised the blade and then recoiled as a black bolt spiraled out and blasted into the outbuilding we’d cleared earlier. The front face of the building disintegrated in a plume of smoke, imploding the rest of the structure. The wood pile that had been leaning against the building toppled. A flock of crows scattered from the nearby trees.

  Yoofi lowered his staff with a frown. “The power feels different, harder to control. I was not aiming for the building.”

  I winced at both the lingering effect of the magic, which did seem to carry more of an edge than usual, and the sight of the destroyed building. Good thing we hadn’t stored any weapons inside.

  “Let’s head in,” I said, opening the door. “We’re leaving on another mission soon. You’ll be with Sarah. She’ll brief you on your assignment.” I paused. “Bring the staff, but plan on using your sidearm.”

  “Yes, Mr. Wolfe.”

  I found Rusty in the computer room. His trucker hat was askew, eyes bloodshot from staring at the monitors for several hours straight. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  “How’s it going?” I asked, coming around to his side.

  I frowned when I saw he had a game of poker open in a corner of one screen.

  “Huh?” He looked over at me, quickly closed the poker window, and resumed typing into a black command box. “Don’t worry about that, boss. I play a hand here and there when I get stuck. Idles down the problem-solving part of my brain just long enough so that when I boot her up again, I’ve got an answer. A few more lines, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have us a code that can patch us into a private subnet for GPS. Any word from the ol‘ director?”

  “Sarah’s been updating him with situation reports, but we haven’t heard back.” I looked over at a screen that was monitoring the surveillance grid he’d installed earlier. “Anything showing up?”

  “Nothing Proddy,” he answered.

  “How about Berglund? Any idea of his whereabouts?”

  “That’s also a negatory.” When he glanced over and saw my concerned look, he added, “I can send a drone out for him, if you want. See what he’s up to. Still can’t believe he whipped out a gun on you.”

  “No, keep the drones over the grid until we head out again.”

  “Head out as in your date with the honey?” Rusty’s eyebrows bounced up and down.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “You left your mic open on our channel, and I had eyes on you two outside.”

  I grunted in annoyance.

  “Watch yourself, boss.”

  “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I zoomed in on her pretty good. Man…” He removed his hat and dragged a hand through his shaggy hair before fitting it back over his head. “She’s the nicest thing I’ve seen since the sweetheart they crowned Maysville Pumpkin Queen two years back. And she’s making it pretty clear what she wants. There has to be at least a part of you thinking, hell, why not?”

  “There isn’t,” I growled.

  “I don’t know, boss. Your voice was doing things I’ve never heard before.”

  I felt my brows crush down and my irises radiate color. Rusty threw up his hands.

  “Whoa, there! I’m just saying be careful is all.”

  I thought about our conversation on the way back from Vegas when I’d called Rusty out for playing reckless while married. It bothered me how quickly the shoe had moved to the other foot.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” I said.

  “Fine, boss. Jeez, don’t look at me like that. I’ve had nothing but MREs for the past twenty-four, and they’re looking for any excuse to blow out the exit chute. In fact, let me take care of that.”

  He shot from his swivel chair and disappeared into an adjoining bathroom.

  I left before the sound effects could begin and headed for the armory. I forced several calming breaths through my muzzle. I’d only lost it because Rusty was right. There was a part of me thinking things it shouldn’t. My wolf part, granted, but as long as we were hitched to one another, I had to take ownership. There
was no reason my mind, my rational captain’s mind, couldn’t override the most reactionary parts of the Blue Wolf. And then there was Daniela.

  I had to keep the importance of the mission forefront as well as my love for my fiancée.

  I looked over the stock of arms. Nadie had said no weapons, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t store a cache nearby. Instead of my bulky MP88, I selected one of the M4 carbines. And since it was starting to feel like anything and its mother could show up out here, I grabbed silver, salt, and conventional ammo mags, along with a similar variety of frag grenades. I stashed them in a duffel bag and was hefting it over a shoulder when Takara spoke from behind me.

  “Sarah says you have an assignment for me.”

  Damn, she moved quietly. I turned to face her. “I do.”

  “Not another babysitting job, I hope.”

  “No, this is a better fit for your skill set. Sarah and I met with Mayor Grimes earlier. In a nutshell, I don’t trust him. He’s hiding something. I think our talk shook him up.”

  “And you want me to see what he does.”

  “Exactly. Find out everything you can. Who he talks to, what they’re talking about. I’m interested in his wife too. She’s a local historian. Might have info on a curse or relevant killings in the past. Grimes put her off limits. Could be out of spite, but it could be something more.”

  Sarah had needed a little convincing on the ride back to put Takara on him, but I reminded her that there was nothing in the contract preventing us from investigating town officials or their families.

  “When do I leave?”

  “Sarah and Yoofi are heading out in about thirty. They can drop you off near town.”

  The red crescents around Takara’s irises flashed. “I’d prefer to set out on foot, alone.”

  I looked at her a moment before nodding. She knew what she was doing. “You’ll find info about the town and mayor on your device. And no engagement. This is a stealth exercise.”

  She turned away.

  “One more thing,” I said.

  She faced me again, this time letting out an impatient sigh.

  I lowered my voice. “Your dragon. How is that going?”

  Though I had caught glimpses of her dragon nature in the last couple of months, it hadn’t come close to manifesting itself fully like in the Chagrath’s realm during the El Rosario mission.