Ilecko approached the double-wide door halfway down the inner wall. Beethoven used hand motions to direct Jaguar and Mantle into—
The drapes shifted in the closest window.
Inside that room, someone—or something—had just moved. She silently alerted the others.
Ilecko put cautious fingers on the door’s handle and turned to catch her eye. Try as she might, she couldn’t find confidence on his face.
Now you’re telling me?
He took a breath and reaffirmed his grip on his shortsword, keeping it tight against the back of his arm.
With no resistance, the door creaked open.
Three
Clifton Road, Northeast of CDC Headquarters
Atlanta, GA
January 1
4:49 p.m.
Jessica Tanner edged through the traffic logjam on Clifton Road, a four-lane highway just north of CDC Headquarters. She was armed with a spritz bottle containing the most lethal biological weapon ever created by man. And onlookers thought she was made up as a clown.
Bacteria, like Sorcerer, are groups of single-celled organisms. Although they’re among the simplest life forms on the planet, they have a complex method of communication, called quorum sensing, in which they “speak” to one another by sending chemical signals. When they hear enough voices in the roll call, they know they have sufficient numbers to infect their host.
Quorum sensing might be a new exploitable weakness in our war against bacterial infection. Overexposure to antibiotics and the ever-present defense mechanism of mutagenesis might cause bacteria to develop into drug-resistant strains, but if we mute their voices, they’ll simply wait forever during roll call.
Vibrio fischeri, a marine bacterium, is one specimen used in QS research. It employs a class of signaling molecules called N-Acyl homoserine lactones, which scientists have interrupted with a synthetic compound derived from plants. Either by luck or design—only God or USAMRIID might know—Sorcerer bacteria use N-Acyl homoserine lactones to communicate.
In fact, not only would the anti-QS technology shield her from infection, it proved to be the key to weaponizing Sorcerer in the first place. Storing the bacteria in a decaying anti-QS medium would keep it essentially hibernating until it reached its destination. As the anti-QS medium decomposed, it would take to the wind and distribute the dormant bacteria. When the anti-QS function ceased, Sorcerer would complete its roll call and commence infection.
The decaying process was based on a solution she’d developed herself, in a research paper examining a concern with bacteria used to consume biodegradable elements in sewage waste. Richard liked to remind her that Jessica Munroe was a brilliant scientist before she was buried under administration. Nice as that felt, conceiving the tech to successfully weaponize Sorcerer hardly felt like a noble achievement.
Nevertheless, here she was with the thick, white anti-QS lotion all over her body. If the passers-by mistook her for a clown, she couldn’t blame them.
On the far side of the highway, Atlanta PD, EMTs and CDC EIS were on the scene of a fresh car crash. One man was lying on the side of the road with major lacerations; two others were under body bags. She could only pray they’d contained any infections.
The trail of blood led Jessica toward the Emory Hotel across the highway. Police, state troopers, FD, and military were on the scene. They’d barricaded the parking lot, but that was unnecessary: The cats weren’t so curious as to peek in on a wild werewolf, not after news reports from New York. Officers and soldiers kept their cover, maintaining cautious aim on the building.
“Ma’am, you can’t be over there,” a trooper called from behind the cover of his vehicle’s door. As if the werewolf might shoot at him.
Several of the hotel’s exterior windows had been smashed, including the glass doors to The Emory Lounge, where CDC scientists often went to—
Jessica stopped cold.
—where Richard often went to—
The pentagram.
Oh my God no. Please, no.
This was the first place she ever saw him. He was meeting a friend from the Army, who had transferred to the CDC. She’d been reviewing reports with an alcoholic colleague.
The werewolf’s roar emanated from inside the darkened shop, followed by a frightful crash of wood and glass.
Jessica’s wobbly legs carried her across the lawn, toward the ruined entrance. She had to see.
“Ma’am, please! It’s not safe over there!“
“I’m with the CDC,” she called absently. “CDC.”
They kept yelling for her to stop, come back, but she couldn’t hear them. A firefighter came forward, but he backed off upon seeing the strange paste smeared on her face and hands.
She stepped through the tatters of the front door, the same door she had opened when she first saw him. Back then he was sitting at his favorite table, a two-seater by the window, and nursing Cordon Rouge.
And there he was now, sprawled on the floor by the window. His chest had been torn away, his ribcage wrenched open. His heart was gone.
His file on the lycanthropy virus was spread around the burgundy mahogany floor, floating across pools of blood and shattered glass.
There were other bodies strewn about. One had landed in the fireplace, another was draped over the wrecked bar. Something hung from the slow fan above, making a cyclical dragging noise.
Richard’s dead eyes stared, asking her How could it end like this?
A guttural purr whispered from the far side of the lounge.
Yellow eyes rose from behind the wine bar. The werewolf slinked over the oak surface, blood dripping from its maw. Melissa Kenzie’s birdlike frame had disappeared inside this top-heavy beast, whose broad shoulders and thick arms tapered into a canine torso and rear legs.
It sniffed cautiously, maybe pondering the mossy odor of the anti-QS lotion, or wondering why she hadn’t fled. Its talons clacked as it approached, keeping time with the skipping fan. Now it was just two feet away.
Questioning Jessica with its eyes, the wolf reared back on its hind legs and roared. Jessica risked one last look at Richard as she tightened her grip on the spray bottle in her trembling hand.
The werewolf was too surprised to react when Jessica lunged forward and sprayed its face. It rolled backward and she backed away, footfalls splashing on the blood-soaked floor.
The wolf shook off the liquid, growling with renewed anger.
Jessica ducked behind an overturned table and the monster lunged. With a thunderous crash, the table buckled and the legs shattered, snaring her within the splinters.
She broke free, but the werewolf had already spun for another attack. Its claws shot out for her—
And then the wolf stumbled, jolted by an itch on its face. Then another.
The werewolf yelped and clawed deep gashes into itself, frantically trying to scratch everywhere at once.
Then Jessica heard the soft pitter-patter of blood, as the creature’s flesh began to lose cohesion. Still it thrashed, now throwing off its own skin.
She huddled behind the table, covering her ears from the shrieks and splats of the werewolf’s disintegration.
Finally, the monster fell against the bar and slid to the floor, leaving behind a trail of clinging flesh.
She lay there for a long moment as the wolf’s remains settled. If the anti-QS solution were going to fail, her flesh should begin to liquify any second now. But she hardly cared.
“Richard?” she called, hoping that maybe he would stand up and come to her, and this all would have been a terrible dream.
“Richard!” she screamed, ordering him to get up.
Moving lights crossed over her head. Distant voices were approaching. An urge flooded her body, telling her to wake him before the others arrived, or else it would all be real. If other people saw him, he couldn’t take it back. He’d really be dead.
As the voices grew louder, she forced herself to her knees. Ruffled pages from Richard’s lycanthr
opy file were all around her, bloodstained and pasted to the hardwood floor.
“Richard!”
She crawled toward him, dragging herself on her elbows, but it was too late. Men in hazmat suits stepped through the windows between her and Richard’s body. They regarded him and turned elsewhere with their flashlights, finding her.
She collapsed as they approached. Her eyes fell on a page from Richard’s lycanthropy file, pasted to the floor a few inches from her cheek.
It was his list of excuses for the pentagram symbol. He’d scratched something at the top while they were on the phone with the kid in Transylvania, and he’d retraced it over and over in the hours since.
Four
Oval Office
The White House
5:50 p.m.
During the last moments before moonrise on New Year’s Day, the country’s top officials were bracing for the worst.
Deaths from the previous night had soared past three hundred, with injuries into the thousands. And how many unaccounted for? How many undocumented infections?
How many werewolves tonight?
A resupply of silver ammunition was distributed to law enforcement officers as they sealed the perimeter of the island. Streets were cleared. Lockdowns for the infected were established in 26 Federal Plaza, One Police Plaza, One Times Square, and Riker’s Island. Several federal and local authorities had been detained for executing the infected, but many such incidents were likely going unreported.
Up to a million citizens were still trapped on the island. Bottlenecking had choked the bridges, and one of the primary exits didn’t work at all: Penn Station was kept closed by power outages and damaged tracks, despite the best efforts of AMTRAK and MTA technicians. In their report to the FBI, AMTRAK said they believed the werewolves had specifically targeted key systems.
Above Penn Station, Madison Square Garden held over twenty thousand stranded refugees from the Times Square celebration. They were questioned and inspected, and a dozen snipers were assigned to keep a close watch on the crowd.
It couldn’t be contained. Not tonight at least. Authorities’ realistic goals were to minimize the spread and buy them more precious hours. Orders were to shoot to kill werewolves on sight.
***
Americans spilling American blood on American soil, President Weston had said to Alan Truesdale, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
He turned us against ourselves, Truesdale had responded.
The administration—and the country, he feared—would never be the same, even if the nightmare ended tonight.
And it clearly was not going to end tonight.
Weston hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. His personal physician checked his blood pressure at his desk in the Oval Office while Weston reviewed the CDC’s latest report on the lycanthropy virus. They were still confounded.
His secretary buzzed. “Mr. President, Mr. Harrison is here.”
It was 5:51, five minutes before moonrise over New York.
As planned, Weston used Teddy’s arrival to escape the doctor’s clutches. They walked silently through the West Wing, nodding false reassurance to every scared face along the way.
They were silent in the elevator, and all the way into the Situation Room.
Truesdale and Luft were waiting for them, along with Defense Secretary Ronald Greenberg, Vice President Allison Leslie, and Attorney General Michael Shinick. They all stood as Weston entered.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Weston said, “we need an endgame.”
Five
Valenkov Estate
Transylvania
12:01 a.m. Eastern European Time
They’d found the castle’s royal bedroom.
The bed was on a raised dais about ten feet from the entrance. Sheer layers of fabric hung from the posts, glistening in the column of starlight falling through the open door. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness, but Tildascow could sense that it was large.
And there was movement inside.
Rustling drapes in a broken window were playing havoc with the room’s ambience. Something shifted on the hardwood floor, but from which direction?
She threw up an arm to stop Ilecko from crossing the double-wide threshold. Crouched beside his waist, she fiddled with her goggles—
Ilecko pushed her aside and entered. She swallowed her instinct to shoulder-throw him back over the balcony.
Beethoven and Jaguar entered behind him, checking the sides first. Her goggles were working, so she followed. Mantle took up cover at the door.
The room was nearly as wide as the loggia, with enough furniture for an entire house. Armoires, chairs, mirrors. And—
Movement behind a wardrobe. Shifting darkness.
“Do not attack,” Ilecko said.
And then they saw it: a werewolf, padding amid the ruined furniture. It purred a warning toward Ilecko.
“Do not attack,” he said again.
Two more werewolves were positioned around the semi-circular bedroom. They triangulated on Ilecko as he continued toward the dais, matching his every cautious step with their own apprehensive pacing.
Mantle and Jaguar moved inside, prompting Ilecko to warn them again. “Do not attack.”
He stepped up onto the dais and Tildascow followed, avoiding the path of dried flower petals. The silk curtain undulated in the wind, just because there weren’t enough distractions in this fucking room.
Someone was lying on the bed.
Ilecko stepped slowly. Clearly dreading what he was about to find, he pulled back the curtain, revealing the decayed corpse of a woman in her wedding gown.
She was surrounded by a thick nest of needles and flakes that had once been long-stemmed roses. Her cream lace gown had been stained putrid green by the liquefaction of her flesh. The half-pound diamond dangling from her skeletal finger blazed in the starlight, and her diamond-and-ruby tiara had slipped and gotten tangled in her rotting curly hair.
—just like mom’s hair, long and curly and matted down, dripping with her own blood—
“His wife?” she asked, jolting herself from the horrors in her mind.
Ilecko silently assessed the body for several long moments. The shadows covering his face were impenetrable, but Tildascow could feel his sorrow.
All the while, the soldiers tracked the wolves’ movement.
Giving Ilecko his time, Tildascow committed the room to memory.
The male dressing area had been arranged along the east wall. A wardrobe, a dresser, and a high-back armchair with wolf heads carved into its handles and claws at its feet. The chair was crooked, and so was the mirror above the table. This room had been ransacked like the others, and set right to create an illusion of peace. It was all part of the shrine.
The west wall held the lady’s things: wardrobes, dressers, make-up tables, a jewelry chest, and a privacy shade. Anachronisms everywhere—an antique hairbrush sitting next to an iPod boom dock; retrofit windows in the ancient, stone walls. These were strong-minded people of their own tastes.
Ilecko threw back the silk curtain, now ready to leave.
“Is that his wife?” Tildascow asked him again.
“Ecaterina,” he croaked. “The Lady Valenkov.”
Ilecko proceeded with a sorrowful gait, ignoring the Shadow Stalkers as they parted to give him a path between their backs.
On her way out, Tildascow noticed a bronze frame peeking out from behind a dresser near the broken window with its angry drapes. As she took a step toward it, the closest werewolf caught her curiosity. She advanced slowly.
“What are you doing?” asked Mantle.
“It’s okay.”
“Do not touch,” said Ilecko from the doorway.
“I got it,” she said, keeping her eyes on the werewolf.
“Jesus Christ, Tildascow,” whispered Mantle.
The werewolf growled, warning but permissive.
She slid the heavy bronze frame from behind the dresser, trying but failing to keep th
e edge from scraping the floor. The metal’s searing cold cut right through her gloves.
It was a larger-than-life portrait of Demetrius and his wife Ecaterina, a ridiculously beautiful couple. The lady was light-skinned, practically ethereal. She was folded into her husband’s chest, peeking out from behind her dark hair like some kind of skulking rogue. The glow of her green eyes had to have been exaggerated by the artist, or else Tildascow wanted her money back from the people at the gene pool.
Tildascow felt a rush of cold as she realized that the crown upon Ecaterina’s head in the painting was the same one now resting on her corpse. The same rings sparkled on her lovely hands, now mere bones.
Demetrius was barely recognizable without his scruffy beard and long hair. He had light skin, honest brown eyes, and a thick Romanian brow, all on the nimble frame of a dancer. His arms were wrapped around his wife’s lower back.
Tildascow lingered on his smile: so calculating, so voracious, and yet spring-loaded with charm.
European elitist fuckwad bastards?
Snide charisma power-brewed from entitlement?
Or… what?
Genuinely happy people?
Fuck happy people.
And the way they were locked together, like their bodies were magnetic but their touch was combustible—Tildascow’s scowl grew a scowl—they made her want to puke. Or something else. Something dirty and sweaty.
She slid the painting back into its hiding spot, hoping the werewolves couldn’t smell cynicism, and she crossed between the Shadow Stalkers. As she exited the bedroom, the cold air on the loggia hit her like an atomic blast.
Ilecko moved her out of the way—she did not like this guy’s hands-on shit—and closed the doors on the werewolves’ glimmering eyes.
“Why didn’t they attack?” Lon asked.
Ilecko rested his head against the seal and closed his eyes in silent prayer.
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