In the Werewolf's Den

by Rob Preece

  Maybe Carl thought he'd confuse Danielle with techniques she'd only read about, making her think rather than let her body operate.

  Well, Carl was a scientist—no one, least of all Danielle, should be surprised if he tried something intellectual or clever. Danielle was the practical one. She decided a spinning triple roundhouse kick followed by a backfist to his already injured eye would put a practical end to his experiment.

  Except her foot got tangled up in hands that seemed to be moving too slowly to be a possible threat but were always exactly where they needed to be.

  She leaned into his grip and jumped, driving an axe kick to the top of his head.

  That kick too ended up entangled.

  She turned a somersault in the air, landing on her feet and facing Carl with a new respect.

  Carl knew what he was doing. He didn't need to shift to wolf form to be dangerous.

  It made her wish that they could be allies rather than enemies. That there was a way to save the good in Carl rather than let it rot in his grave.

  Danielle forced down the thoughts, all thoughts. Thinking is the enemy in the martial arts.

  Carl advanced on her slowly, giving her time to catch her breath, breath deeply, focus on the now, let her body and mind become one.

  He was watching her eyes, looking for that momentary sign when she made up her mind and decided to act.

  She clamped down on her physiological responses. She wasn't going to telegraph anything.

  Danielle faked another kick, let Carl catch her up in his sticky hand technique, and drove her foot down into his instep.

  He avoided her strike, but barely. His eyes narrowed. He hadn't been expecting that.

  Well, she had. She'd also expected that her first strike would miss. But she was in close now. Her blur gave her the advantage of speed and she used it, slamming elbows, fists, palm, and knife-hand into soft targets.

  Carl managed to avoid most of them, but one backfist snuck through to his already swollen eye and a knee connected with his groin.

  Which should have ended it. Everyone knows that men were complete weenies when it comes to a groin strike.

  But it didn't. And Carl was away from her.

  She had been confident that the fight was over—that she could press after him, taking a few strikes, perhaps, but dealing out three for every one she took. Except she had no idea how he'd gotten away.

  Still, she had achieved two effective strikes. So far Carl had done nothing but block.

  Although she was breathing easily, she knew that she was overusing the blur. It was great for a minute or two at most. Counting the earlier matches against Snori and the vampire, she'd already used it for close to twenty.

  She needed to finish Carl off quickly because if she didn't, she would slow down. And if she slowed down, Carl was going to have her for lunch.

  * * * *

  She was good.

  Without his wolf reflexes, Carl knew he'd be finished by now. Even with them, he was getting beat.

  Danielle moved more quickly than any normal he'd ever seen. Television programs made a big deal about the warder blur, taught to an elite group of warders in their academy in Los Angeles. But television, and even the time she'd attacked him when he accidentally took wolf form, hadn't prepared him for the fighting machine that Danielle became.

  He backed away from another attack, relying strictly on defense and counterstrikes, refusing to commit himself to something that could put him in trouble. Danielle's techniques were picture-perfect, but she wasn't completely scientific. If he could stay in the fight long enough, he could analyze her weaknesses and strike.

  Of course, staying in the fight was the key challenge.

  She double-feinted, then tried a risky sweep.

  He leapt over her leg, then saw that she had anticipated his reaction and was moving in to finish him.

  Somehow, however, her strike was a fraction of a second too slow, hundredths of a second being the difference between a crippling strike and a somewhat painful blow to his thigh.

  He chopped at her arm reflexively, knowing that he would never connect. Except he did.

  Danielle winced, pulled back in disengage.

  Then he saw it. She was slowing and clearly was not used to backing away from a fight.

  Those were the weaknesses he'd been searching for. He closed in, letting her strike at his body but protecting his head and joints, and started pounding out his own attack.

  Danielle scored again and again, managing to avoid most of his strikes, but he was determined that this match would not be decided by points but by whichever fighter remained standing. Danielle had overused the warder-trained resources she called on and underestimated his Were-enhanced ability to absorb punishment and keep on coming. He didn't like it, felt guilty about it, but he intended to make her pay for that misjudgment.

  A hint of concern crossed her eyes so quickly that he would have missed it if those eyes hadn't fascinated him for weeks.

  He smiled, ever so faintly, hoping that she'd use too much of her precious energy to wipe it from his face.

  Danielle hammered fists into his stomach, the pain sharp and nearly incapacitating. Nearly, but not quite. He made himself grin through the agony.

  She hit harder, clearly thinking she was winning, not analyzing, as he had done, the relative costs of her strikes against her ability to continue.

  Finally, just as he was beginning to wonder if he'd made a terrible miscalculation, Carl saw her blur fail, restart, then fail again.

  He struck as she was trying to recoup it.

  No martial arts textbook would suggest a turning roundhouse against an opponent of Danielle's speed. But Carl pivoted, using the momentum of his turn to power his foot into Danielle's belly.

  She froze, caught him with a look that would forever haunt his dreams, and collapsed.

  The crowd went wild.

  The impaired fans swarmed into the field, clapping, shouting, and celebrating. The normals hung back for a moment, then surged themselves.

  But they weren't celebrating. Many of them pulled out concealed weapons. They waded into the crowd of the magical like reapers cutting wheat.

  Carl fought back a curse. He'd counted on drunken normals who wanted to break windows for Arenesol's diversion. He hadn't expected them to be prepared with clubs, brass knuckles, and sawed off shotguns. As if they'd known that something was going to happen—had been planning to riot whatever the event's outcome.

  With practically no delay, black warder helicopters shook the darkening sky. Their searchlights circled around, hunting for pockets of the magical, pointing them out to groups of sullen normals.

  Carl sighed. Arenesol had been right. The warders did participate in riots. Well, this wasn't what he'd had in mind, but it looked like the Tigers were getting their distraction.

  He grabbed Danielle from where she lay, still moaning on the ground, slung her over a shoulder, and headed for the locker rooms and the back exit from the stadium. Time to get back to his experiments. He'd certainly proven his failure as a reformer. The money he'd made from television sponsors suddenly felt empty.

  Chapter 9

  Danielle swam across an endless gray sea.

  The waves tossed her body around, oblivious to her struggles. And around her, the horizon stretched endlessly. It was a sea of nothingness.

  Gradually, sensation returned.

  Pain came first.

  Her ribs ached where Snori had scored. Her arms ached from hard blocks. Her head throbbed from who knew what contact.

  She couldn't remember what had hit her, but she was pretty sure she'd lost.

  Joe wouldn't be happy.

  She almost jerked at that thought. Time was passing and she had a job to do.

  The gentle rocking of waves against her body resolved themselves not into swimming, but deliberate movement. She was being carried.

  She inhaled deeply and caught the scent of Carl—clean, male, and sexy.
/>   He must be carrying her. Which meant that she hadn't missed her chance to finish her job.

  She ignored the sick feeling that thought created and risked opening one eye.

  Carl was jogging easily despite a hundred and twenty pounds of woman in his arms. A small group of impaired had gathered around him. Several, she noted, carried clubs. One of the Were had transformed and was running ahead, sniffing at doors, his ears perked straight up and alert.

  Smoke stung her eyes, warred with the clean scent of Carl in her nostrils.

  A squawk of radio static was followed by a burst of voice that Danielle's muddled mind could make no sense of.

  "The Tigers ran directly into a reinforced group of warders,” Mike the Vampire reported to Carl. “Most were killed. The rest retreated back into the zone. The word they're using is treachery."

  "Meaning what?” She'd never heard that hard tone in Carl's voice. Even when he'd been angry with her, he'd always held a streak of humanity that shone like a beacon.

  "Hey, boss, I'm just reporting what they're saying."

  "And just what are they saying?"

  "That you let your pet warder find out about the plan and she squealed."

  All through her body, Danielle sensed Carl's muscles tense. In moments of crisis, his wolf-self fought to assert itself. Would he lose it now and tear into the vampire?

  She didn't miss the irony that Carl's wolf-self wanted to protect her when she had already betrayed him and now was going to be forced to terminate him.

  "Somebody talked."

  Danielle hadn't sensed Arenesol, but his distinctive voice rang with certainty. “You know that no elf would betray the breakout."

  Arenesol was right. The warders had tens of thousands of informants in every zone in America. Not one was an elf.

  "Who else knew?"

  "You are the only non-elf we told,” Arenesol said. “You figure it out from there."

  Arenesol's words hung in the air like the smoke.

  Carl continued his jog, seemingly oblivious to Danielle's weight, and his gang ran alongside, ducking through filth-covered alleys, cutting through uninhabited homes and deserted strip malls, and dashing across the few major streets that they could not avoid.

  The roar of black warder helicopters split the sky, their searchlights cutting through the evening darkness.

  "She must have wired my lab,” Carl said. “I should have guessed."

  "My wife, my brother, my beautiful daughters. All killed. The warders trapped them and slaughtered them like sheep.” Arenesol sounded like he'd been hollowed out from the inside, left with nothing to live for.

  Danielle couldn't blame him. The elf might be impaired and crooked. Still, she had met his little girls. They had been precious things with their pointy little ears and tiny bodies. The older had been thirteen, just passing from child to womanhood. She would never make that passage now. Both girls had been innocent of anything but wanting to live their lives in freedom.

  And Arenesol was right. By informing on Carl, Danielle had killed those little girls as surely as if she'd yanked their pretend swords from their hands and thrust through their hearts.

  Joe had lied to her. He'd promised to simply block the Tiger escape. Joe had been the rock she'd built her world on after her mother's death. If he lied about this, Danielle had to question everything he'd ever told her. Everything she'd learned from the day she decided to become a warder.

  She swallowed hard.

  Carl set her down on the ground. Around him, the mixed party of elves, dwarves, vampires, trolls, and Were milled. The two trolls leaned against a freestanding wall, the remains of a long-deserted brick home, gasping for breath.

  "We can't go back to the lab,” Carl stated. “If they knew about the breakout, they'll be looking for us there."

  "What about the warder?” Arenesol wasn't letting up. “If you don't kill her now, she'll betray us again."

  "She was doing her job,” Carl argued.

  Arenesol spat on the ground. “Those murderers who slaughtered my precious daughters were doing their job, too. Nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to join the warders."

  He squared up against Carl, almost pressing his narrow elf-chest against the breadth of Carl's muscular torso. “Plenty of normals either ignore the magical or cooperate with us. So don't give me any crap about just doing her job. She killed my daughters and fifty of my kinsmen as sure as if she'd slit their throats with a silver blade."

  The elf backed off abruptly at Carl's wolf-like growl.

  Arenesol put up a hand. “Damn it, Carl, listen to me. I've got a lot of respect for you. You came into the zone and made things happen. A lot of folks figured you were just a crazy scientist puttering away with your chemicals and test tubes. But that's not it. We've done more building in the zone since you got here than we did in the decade before you arrived. I know you're smart, and not just with the I.Q."

  The elf kicked the ground and, for the first time, seemed to search for words. Finally he continued. “So why don't you show some of that intelligence and think this through? You don't seriously think the warder is going to owe you for keeping her alive, do you? Because, like as not, she's already got orders to terminate you. The warders don't put up with magical who try to make things better."

  "That's just not true,” Carl argued. His voice almost shook with surprise. “They let me out of jail so I could do my research."

  Arenesol laughed. “Yeah, but what happens when you find your cure? You already know that most of us won't take it. Don't you think they know that?"

  "I don't—"

  "You hadn't thought about that, right? They'll use it on any magical who steps out of line. Cure him, as they'll call it. Except they won't let them rejoin normal society. They'll just classify him as latent and leave him here. Surrounded by the talented. Laden with memories of being something beyond merely human, but forever stripped of those abilities. It'll be like giving a man sight, then yanking out his eyes."

  Carl slammed a fist into the brick wall. “That's not what I intend, Arenesol, and you know it."

  "What you intend may not have a lot to do with anything, Carl. They'll use what you bring them and then spit you out like a watermelon seed."

  "Maybe you're right,” Carl stated softly. “What do you think, Danielle?"

  She'd been certain Carl thought she was still unconscious. She'd modulated her breathing, even her heartrate to keep her secret.

  Obviously, he'd seen through her best efforts. Equally obviously, she was about to die.

  In the Warder Academy, she'd learned to lie. To keep her composure when telling the most outrageous story, and to make even herself believe it. She couldn't imagine a lie that would fool anyone now. Besides, she was tired of lying, emotionally drained by the lies that Joe Smealy, the man she had trusted more than anyone else, had used against her.

  After Joe's betrayal, trust was hard. But it didn't matter. Danielle threw away all of her training, all of what she'd been taught about the impaired. She decided to trust Carl.

  She struggled to her feet, unwilling to face her death lying down.

  "If the warders want to use your invention as a weapon, they never told me."

  "And you just thought they would let millions of supposedly cured talented integrate back into normal society.” Arenesol's sarcastic voice cut through the night.

  She shrugged. “My job was to herd Carl. Keep him doing his job."

  "Is that right? And how did you do?"

  She hoped that the darkness of the night, lit only by distant fires as parts of the zone burned, would hide the flush on her face. She had been a terrible herder. She'd had sex with her herd, failed to follow through on a termination order, and let him create a gang in the zone. Even though she had headed off a dangerous breakout, she could hardly claim any great success, even for that.

  "That's between me and the Special Agent in Charge."

  "I don't imagine Joe Smealy will be very happy w
hen he finds out that you didn't terminate Carl. Or are you counting on us doing that for you?"

  The question was transparent. Arenesol was trying to get her to admit to something he had no evidence about. Unfortunately, they could find evidence of her bugs if they looked for them.

  "Why are you listening to him?” she demanded of Carl, trying to take the offensive even though her heart wasn't really in it. “He's a creepy elf who deals in drugs, explosives, and blackmail."

  For a moment, Carl's eyes softened and she thought she was getting through.

  Then he shook his head slowly. “We're going to have to talk about this, Danielle. But not tonight."

  Danielle shrugged. He thought there might actually be a later. If only that was a possibility.

  "We've got a backup compound just down Bishop Street,” he told her. “I don't think your bugs would have picked up any discussion of it so it should be safe. I'd like you to go there with Snori. We need some time apart."

  "You can't send me away like this, Carl. I'm your herder."

  He shook his head. “Not any more, Danielle. After what you did, and after what the warders did, I don't owe you anything. But I owe Arenesol and the Tigers payback. So tonight, I'm going hunting."

  He transformed as she watched, his torso lengthening, his nose and mouth growing together into the wolf's grinning face.

  The wolf glanced at Arenesol, caught a sign that even Danielle's warder-trained senses missed, and slipped around the corner.

  "Let's go, Mistress Goodman,” Snori suggested.

  "I'm going after Carl. And if you think you can drag me off to some safe house, you're just looking for trouble."

  "Damn right,” the troll told her. “Just because I have a bum leg doesn't mean that I'm going to hole up in some little cave somewhere and let other people take care of business."

  She realized she hadn't thought about Snori's leg since she'd taken out his knee.

  "I'm sorry about that kick,” she told him.

  "Hey, it was legal. You were trying to win. Same as me,” Snori said. “Course if I'd hurt you any, the boss would have really let me have it."

  "You knew he was good, didn't you?"

  Snori shrugged. “We trained together a couple of times. Never fought anyone like him before. He's so, well, peaceful. But he's just where he needs to be."