“Got a call from Croft while you were handing off the children,” he said. “Turns out the Chagrath wasn’t just sent back to its realm, it was blown from freaking existence. There’s still a gaping hole, but a couple of wizards are en route to stitch it up. Should be there by morning, before anything else tries to crawl through. They’ll take a look at Nicho and the children too. Clean any remaining Chagrath gunk from their systems. You did a helluva job, he wanted me to tell you.”
I glanced over at my bloodied and haggard team, remembering my first assessment of them and Rusty: a priest, a ninja, a zombie, and a guy who looked like he should be working crew on the carny circuit. But damned if my group of misfits hadn’t gotten the job done.
“It was a team effort,” I said. “Way to hang in there tonight.”
“Anything’s better than hanging from the end of your claws.”
His reference to our first encounter made me chuckle. “Any word on Sarah?”
“She not there yet? She was supposed to be coming in.”
I turned to where the helicopters had landed and spotted her emerging from one of the newly-arrived. I waved her over. “I’ll send some Centurion guys to help you load the van,” I told Rusty. “I want us out of here inside the hour.”
“You got it, boss.”
With the mission accomplished, my thoughts were already back on Daniela. I couldn’t ignore the burning concern I felt.
“Good to see you up and about,” I called as Sarah arrived in front of me. “How are you feeling?” Her face was still a little pale, but her eyes were back in the business of absorbing info.
“I’m fine. Well done tonight.”
Though she spoke stiffly, I caught her gaze going to the family reunions still happening around us. I didn’t have to ask to know she was thinking about the Philippines and how things might have gone differently had there been a team like Legion around. She’d been right to defy Centurion’s evacuation order—policies and procedures be damned—and I sensed she knew this now.
“Have you talked to Director Beam?” I asked.
“No, not yet. Do you have my samples?”
I snorted as I reached into my vest, pulled out a filled tube, and handed it to her. Though I knew now that there was a human buried somewhere inside her, Sarah’s clinical detachment remained remarkable. She held the tube up to the moonlight, turning it one way and the other.
“It’s not labeled.”
“‘Chagrath Goop,’” I said. “There.”
I’d remembered to scoop up some of the black gunk while Yoofi took care of Chepe’s final rites. Sarah pulled out a pen, wrote something on the label—probably not “Chagrath Goop”—and placed the tube in her pocket.
“Was that the only sample?”
“Yes.” My satellite phone began to ring. “Excuse me.”
I turned and looked down at the number. Not one I recognized. Was this Segundo calling with an update? My heart pounded the back of my sternum as I answered and brought the phone to my ear.
“Yes?”
“Captain Wolfe,” a genteel voice said.
“Reginald Purdy,” I replied, my heart cycling back down. “You received my message?”
“I did.”
In the silence that followed, I braced for the rebuke. Instead, he broke into hoarse laughter.
“I’m calling to congratulate you.”
“So you’re all right with what I did?”
“Listen to me, Captain. What you did is what the Legion Program is supposed to stand for.”
“Good,” I cut in. “Then I need a favor.”
29
Four hours later
Two Centurion agents were standing beside a sleek sedan on the tarmac of the Houston Airport when my private flight touched down. They looked like spooks in their black suits. Or pall bearers.
I ran over to meet them.
“The shooting happened about forty-five minutes ago,” one of the agents said.
“How fast can you get me there?”
“Climb in,” the other agent said and took his place behind the wheel.
It was Saturday morning and still dark. That factor plus the car’s speed cut a normally hour-and-a-half trip to just over forty minutes. It felt like ten times that.
When I started hyperventilating, I removed my helmet even though the agents hadn’t been briefed on what I was. There had been no time to get another experimental injection to me, either. I was still the Blue Wolf. The agents exchanged looks, but didn’t say anything.
I made several calls. None were answered.
“It’s this right,” I said, even though the driver was already turning.
My voice was more guttural than usual, the words seeming to tear my throat.
She didn’t get my message last night, I thought numbly. She stayed home.
As the agent navigated the streets of Daniela’s neighborhood, I was jumping out of my skin. I had to restrain myself from throwing the door open, bailing out, and sprinting to her house myself.
At last the driver turned onto her street. A squad of police cars came into view. Her driveway was cordoned off with yellow tape, an officer controlling access. Beyond, her red front door was open. Officials went in and out. My heart pounded sickly as I stared from the tinted window.
“We have no jurisdiction here,” the driver reminded me. “What do you want to do?”
The question draped me like a massive weight. I’d tried to get here in time, but I hadn’t.
“Pull over,” I said.
The driver eased to the curb across the street from her house. The sky was just beginning to pale, and Daniela’s neighbors had emerged in bathrobes and bed-stiff hair to see what was going on. They stood in small groups consulting one another, sharing suburban intel. My hearing picked up bits of what they said.
“…two shots, one right after the other…”
“…ambulance left about twenty minutes ago…”
When my phone rang, I nearly fumbled it to answer.
“Jason,” Daniela said, her voice shaking badly. She added quickly, “First, I want you to know that I-I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“I shot him,” she said. “I shot Kurt.”
I’d known that, of course. What I didn’t know was how it had happened.
“You’re all right, though?” I asked. “You’re not hurt?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“All right. Just take a deep breath, then tell me what happened.”
“I just told the police everything. They’re still here. Where are you?”
“I’m in the states. What happened, Dani? Please, tell me.”
She paused to blow out a shaky breath. I did the same, forcing my shoulders down. “He showed up early this morning and started banging on the front door. The dogs went crazy and I woke up. I got out of bed and checked from the kitchen window. It was Kurt. He must have seen the blinds move because he demanded I come out and talk to him. When I wouldn’t, he—”
Her voice hitched.
“Take your time,” I said.
“He started screaming at me, saying awful things. It was like he was unleashing every dark, violent thought he’d ever held against me. Just hurling them against the house.”
The image made all of my muscles bunch up again. “Did you—?”
“Have the Glock?” she cut in. “Yes, but I grabbed my phone. And—it feels so stupid of me now. I plugged it in last night, but the charger wasn’t all the way in. The battery was dead.”
Which explained why my call yesterday had gone to her voicemail.
“What happened next, Dani?”
“I—I plugged it in, but then I had to wait a minute for the phone to power up. Meanwhile, Kurt was still outside screaming, but I couldn’t see him. Then I realized he was circling the house, trying the doors. The dogs were going berserk. When I called 9-1-1, the dispatcher wanted to know if Kurt had made a direct threat against me.” Daniela barked out a l
augh. “I told her it didn’t matter because he was violating the restraining order. After tapping away on her computer for what felt like forever, the dispatcher told me to hold tight, a vehicle would be here in twenty to thirty minutes. I told her I wasn’t ordering a pizza—I didn’t have twenty to thirty minutes!”
I noticed her voice becoming stronger as she spoke. I encouraged her to continue.
“By the time I got off the phone, I couldn’t hear Kurt anymore. I looked out a window just before he disappeared down the end of the driveway. A few seconds later I heard what sounded like a car trunk open and slam shut. When he reappeared, I knew he’d just gotten something out of his car. And by the way he was walking, one arm not swinging, I knew he had it concealed in his jacket.”
Attagirl.
“I got the dogs out of the room, closed the door, went back to the window, and opened it quietly. It was the office window at the front of the house, the one in that dark corner. He couldn’t see me.”
I nodded some more. Thinking like a soldier.
“I sighted on his chest and shouted that if he came any closer, I’d shoot.”
Even though I already knew the outcome, I was squeezing the phone hard enough to crush it. Maybe it was because that had always been my biggest fear: despite owning a sidearm and being a decent shot, Dani was such a saint that when it came time to pull the trigger, she wouldn’t have it in her. I always imagined her trying to talk to her aggressor, convinced she could tame whatever violence was raging in his mind. Especially in a case like this, where she knew the SOB.
“He reached into his jacket,” she said, “and I squeezed twice.”
My hand relaxed a little around the phone. “You did the right thing,” I assured her.
“I wasn’t sure until he fell and I saw the actual gun.” She released her breath. “It landed beside his right foot. I called 9-1-1 with an update and then covered him from the window until they arrived. I didn’t need to, it turned out. The detective said he was dead before he hit the ground. She also said that I was entirely within my rights. Not only did he violate the restraining order, but he’d threatened me while armed. She took my statement here.”
I hit my head on the ceiling when I sat up. “You’re at your house?”
This whole time I’d assumed she was talking to me from a police precinct.
“Yeah, there’s a team still here.” A murmured voice sounded through the phone. Daniela replied to it, then came back on. “The detective just said they’ll be out of my hair in a few minutes.”
I watched the activity around the front of her house. Dani was inside, literally a few dozen steps away. The police would never let me past the cordon, but if I waited until they left…
“Jason? You still there?” Dani asked.
“Yeah, sorry. How are you doing? Not physically, but you know … with what happened?”
I was thinking about my first kill. I’d lain awake that night, wondering about the enemy soldier whose life I’d taken. But it had been his or mine. He had known that too. Still, it took several more kills before I stopped dwelling on them. They stayed with me, but I didn’t let them own me.
Dani didn’t have that luxury.
“I’ve had this fear hanging over me for the last five years,” she said. “A fear, I guess, that Kurt would come back and try to hurt me. A fear I didn’t even know was there.” A nervous laugh. “Because the second he hit the driveway, and it was clear that, one way or another, he’d never come after me again, that fear was gone. And it’s still gone. I have a counselor friend I’m going to talk to, but you asked me how I’m doing and right now I feel … I feel good.”
I suspected there was a battered woman in Central Florida who would feel just as much, if not more, relief when she learned her boyfriend had been gunned down in self defense.
But there you had it. Dani felt good. She’d go through the ups and downs just like I had done. And just like me, she’d be all right in the end. I’d be there to make sure.
“At least now you know I can take care of myself,” she said.
“I never doubted that,” I lied.
I started to imagine her dubious frown. But I didn’t have to. She emerged onto the front porch, and I could see the frown as clear as day from across the street. She’d thrown on a white T-shirt and jeans and tied her hair up with a blue bandana. She looked amazing.
“Jason,” she said in her stern voice.
“All right, I was concerned,” I amended with a smile. “But you handled it exactly right. I’m proud of you.”
“Well, I don’t want you feeling like you have to worry about me.”
“I’ll promise not to worry about you if you stop worrying about me. Easy, right?”
“Where are you again?”
She’d been pacing the front porch, but she stopped and seemed to be staring straight at our car. I drew back before realizing she couldn’t see me through the tinting. But maybe now was the time to come clean. To tell her what had happened, what I’d become, and why I needed to finish out my year away from her.
“I just completed a mission,” I said. “I’m back in the country.”
“Oh, is that your definition of routine?”
“It was last minute. There were children involved.”
I watched Dani’s hand go to her chest. “Are they…?”
“They’re fine now.”
Dani nodded and turned so she was no longer facing our car. “You’re doing what you need to be doing, then.” She moved the phone from her mouth to talk to whom I assumed was the detective. A police officer started taking down the crime-scene tape.
They were leaving.
My heart thundered as my gloved talons curled around the door release. I was anxious in a way I hadn’t been in El Rosario. It came from the thought that Daniela would accept me for who I had become—and her acceptance would be true—but deep down she would harbor the same fear she had felt toward Kurt. Because it was a fear we all shared in the most primitive parts of ourselves. The fear of the Beast. I couldn’t bear the thought of evoking that in her. And would it ever go away, even after I was restored to my human form?
“Sorry about that,” she said when she came back on.
“Daniela…” I started to say, but we were moving. The car was pulling from the curb. I covered the mouthpiece and jabbed the driver’s shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
“Centurion wants you back in Vegas right away.”
I pulled on the release, but the door was locked from the inside.
“I’m in the middle of something, goddammit.” But as I watched the neighboring house swallow Daniela from view, it occurred to me that we might have been called to another mission. While my human eyes strained back, I felt my wolf eyes peering forward in anticipation.
“Mission reasons?” I asked.
“Something to do with Bioengineering.”
“Biogen?” Had there been a breakthrough? A cure?
“Hey, Jason, can I call you back?” Daniela said. “My parents just pulled up.”
“Of course,” I replied distractedly, hoping the next time we talked I would have some really good news for her.
We spoke our love for one another and our gratitude that the other was all right before ending the call. As the car pulled from Daniela’s neighborhood, I noticed my fingers still hooked around the door’s release. When I moved the hand to my lap, it was with a guilty mixture of regret and relief.
30
I spent the next three days at the bioengineering building on Centurion’s campus. I was kept in the basement, a sterile laboratory of too-bright fluorescent lights and too-white walls. I was stuck, injected, and siphoned from by faceless researchers in hazmat suits. I underwent batteries of tests while buried in a riot of electrodes and intravenous lines. My physical form never changed.
When it was over, I was released without any real explanation of what they had done or what, if anything, they had learned.
&n
bsp; The data needed to be analyzed, I was told.
I returned to the Legion campus, glad to be out of there and back in more familiar environs. As I strode up to the barracks, I was surprised to hear grunts coming from the far side of the building. I walked around to find Takara moving around the sandy yard, cleaving the air with a variety of kicks and punches.
“Takara,” I said.
“Wolfe,” she responded between blows.
Progress, I thought. Before our mission, she wouldn’t have said anything.
“How’s your thigh?”
“How does it look?” she snapped, launching into a clean jump kick.
Aaand we still have a ways to go.
I peered around and sniffed the air. “Where is everyone?” The last time I’d seen the other team members was at the Centurion base outside Mexico City, before I’d jumped a flight to Houston.
“Rusty and Yoofi went into Las Vegas. The others, I don’t know.”
I nodded and then watched her for several moments. I found I couldn’t not see her as the fiery red dragon that had destroyed Baboso, even though no light shone from her eyes or hand tattoos now.
“Listen—” I started to say, but she cut me off.
“I don’t want to talk about what you saw in the Chagrath’s realm.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to bring up.”
She gave me a sidelong look as she kicked to the height of a tall man’s head.
“I’ve seen your scars,” I said.
She grunted a little louder with her next two blows.
“I know how they got there. August 6, 1945. Hiroshima. You were in the radius of the atomic blast. You lost your immediate family and were badly injured. I understand why you’d be angry at the ones who did that.”
For the last three days, I’d had time to think about a lot of things. Among them, Takara’s incomplete file. I lined up the gaps with our recent experiences. Like the dragon shifters of Waristan, Takara’s dragon nature had extended her life. She was much older than she appeared—at least ninety, by my estimate. Old enough to have survived the atomic attack on Hiroshima, anyway. That was what she’d meant when she said “read your history.”
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