by Mark Henwick
“We should put the Athanate issue aside,” Alex said, “and concentrate on the pack.”
Noble nodded.
Felix folded his arms. “You’re implying that you remain a loyal member of the pack,” he said, “and yet you’re disobeying my orders. You know that doesn’t work for us.”
“It’s not about loyalty or obedience. The question comes down to whether Amber is pack or not. If she’s pack, then she has a right to call on the pack.” He paused, and I could feel him searching out the best path. No one else spoke. “When we mate, our mates are pack, whether they change or not. And she’s acknowledged you as alpha. For me, she’s pack.”
“We’re not animals. I don’t get confused between mating and sex,” Felix replied. “And as for acknowledging me, she immediately put a limitation on it. She said she wouldn’t go against Altau interests.”
“I’ve said the same to Altau about the pack interests,” I pointed out.
“But then the Athanate comes back into the discussion. You can’t be half in the pack—”
“Altau say the same, but they’re willing to say I’m an affiliate.”
“And even if I agree to that, Alexander didn’t go running into the building at Longmont where you were being held, he went to help rescue your kin. How far are you going to stretch the pack obligation? Your kin? Your whole damn House? Altau?”
He had a point. I swallowed. More seat of the pants stuff here. “My House isn’t separate from me.”
“That’s Athanate talk.”
“Well, fine, I’m part Athanate. But I’m part Were, too.”
I wanted to say that my pack wouldn’t be separate from me either, but I couldn’t yet.
Noble stopped his jotting and heads turned. It intrigued me how much quiet influence he seemed to have. What kind of a werewolf was he? He didn’t fit in the obvious enforcer category that Ricky did. But at least he seemed to be on the side of finding a rational way through this.
“I’m not willing to come to a final decision right now,” Felix said.
Ricky grunted an agreement. “Long term solutions are probably better reached after some time for contemplation,” he said.
Uh! Enough with the dumb stereotypes, Amber. He’s not just an enforcer.
“Which leaves some interim requirements,” Felix said, “before we get on with the purpose of this meeting, which was to talk about the rogue.”
He stared at Alex and me. “Alexander will be accompanied by a senior pack member at all times,” he said. “Ricky, that’ll be you, Ursula or Silas. He stays at your house. I’ll review the situation when we’re rid of our current problems.”
“We can’t really spare—” Ricky started.
Alex tried to say something as well, but Felix cut them both off. “I’m not saying you stop hunting the Matlal pack, just that Alexander is never alone with Amber without supervision. I need a second set of eyes and ears to convince me he isn’t having his mind affected. We cannot,” he stressed the word and glared around the room, “we cannot have the pack disrupted at this juncture. That includes getting involved in Athanate politics or getting distracted from the challenges that face us. That’s final.”
But he’s already bound to me, and I’m bound to him.
Shut up and salute.
Neither Ricky nor Alex were happy, but Alex had picked up on something that Felix said. “There are more from the Matlal pack? I thought we’d dealt with them.”
Ricky shook his head.
Noble was unreadable, his eyes hooded as he watched the three of us.
I cleared my throat. Felix turned and stared.
“I just wanted to suggest I get involved in the hunt for the Matlal Were, as well.”
“Why?” Felix said, but beneath the rough response, I thought I’d actually said something right.
“A couple of reasons,” I said. “Firstly, they’re Were and they’ve been in Denver for a few months. It just might be they’ve got an idea about the rogue. Maybe they’ve come across him. Or her.”
Ricky nodded.
Felix just grunted, his eyes narrowed and calculating, so I continued: “Secondly, they’re part of Matlal’s House, directly or as affiliates. They might know where the Matlal Athanate are hiding.” I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity, so I ploughed on. “Also, Altau are requesting your assistance in this. They’re too stretched—”
“With their own preoccupations and they want us to fix their problems and track down the Matlal Athanate. No.”
“But—”
“No. Since you offered it, we’ll take your help with the Matlal Were, but we’re not putting effort into helping Altau again.” He waved his hand as if he were away swatting flies. “If we come across them, we’ll inform Altau. Nothing more. We deal with the Were, Altau deal with the Athanate. That seems fair to me.”
“We could at least try and ensure she has some of the Were to question,” Ricky said. “They might not know about the Matlal Athanate, but they must have some idea where the other Matlal Were are, and, as she said, they might know something about the rogue.”
“Good point. Agreed.”
“What will happen to them afterwards?” I said, afraid I knew the answer already.
Felix’s flat stare confirmed it.
“Can’t you try to assimilate them somehow?” My skin crawled at the thought of interrogating prisoners who were going to be killed.
“They’re not the assimilating types,” Noble said quietly. “It’s not that kind of situation.”
“If you’re with us, you’ll see,” Alex said obscurely.
“What’s Altau’s position on the Matlal Athanate?” Felix asked. “Or any Basilikos in Denver? Are they going to adopt them?” He knew the answer to that. Any Athanate House would kill Athanate from the opposing creed who ventured into their area without specific permission. I could hardly say the Denver pack were being unreasonable.
I shifted in my seat. I wasn’t going to progress in that direction. Time to change tack. There was so much I didn’t understand about what was going on. “Why are they staying?” I asked. “Matlal’s out of power, his House has been effectively disowned. There’s nothing for them. It’s a death sentence to stay in Denver. Why don’t they just run?”
Ricky froze. Noble stopped scribbling on his pad. It looked like I’d just stumbled on some secret that they’d not wanted to tell me.
I put on my best polite, attentive face and waited.
“They made a decision as soon as Matlal lost his position, didn’t they?” Alex said.
Felix silenced Alex with a look. I could see him weighing up whether to allow this to be explained to me. In the end, he waved Alex on. He was staring at me, as if he wanted to gauge my reaction to what Alex told me.
“We don’t know where Matlal brought them in from, but we’re sure they didn’t have their own territory, or we’d know about it. We’re not like the Athanate, but we do communicate.” Alex reached forward and poured us a glass of water each from a pitcher on the table. “Anywhere else they go, they have nothing. But they do have something here, if they can hold it.”
“You’re saying they have a chance to take this territory from you? Damn! How many of them are there left?”
Ricky sniffed. “There might be a couple of dozen left.”
“Then how could they take Denver?”
“With help.” Alex said. “I said we’re not like the Athanate, but there is an association of werewolves. It’s called the Central Mountain Confederation.”
I felt the overtones in his voice and prickled with unease on behalf of my maybe-pack.
“They stretch from around Calgary all the way down to Cheyenne,” Ricky said. “Colorado is the first piece of Rocky Mountain estate in the south that’s not part of the confederation.”
“They’ve requested we join them. We refused. Three times so far.” Alex took a sip of water. “The Matlal Were will know that. If they can claim to be a pack in residence, and they’re
willing to join the Confederation, we’ll have real trouble. The Confederation will come in on their side.”
I was surprised by the anger that caused in me. How could the Confederation dare to do this?
“There’s no way you want to join the Confederation?”
Felix shook his head angrily.
Parts of the whole picture suddenly crystallized in my head. Felix was walking a tightrope here with the Altau on one side and the Confederation on the other. What if some of the pack didn’t agree with his stance? No wonder he was so prickly about the solidity of the pack.
On this I was with him entirely. I’d picked up Alex’s reaction to the Confederation and that had just become my position. I didn’t want them here.
“What about other packs who don’t want to join?” I said. “Could we form an association purely to not be in the Confederation?”
“There’s nothing as powerful as them, and there’s no sufficient reason we could use to persuade others to get involved.”
“They’re just going to bury their heads in the sand until it’s their turn?” I asked, even angrier.
Silence greeted my question. I couldn’t say Felix looked happier at my outburst, but he looked less unhappy.
“So, you can see,” Ricky said. “Our priorities are split. If the rogue goes on killing he may be caught, but he’s gotten away with it so long, what are the odds on that? On the other hand, if we don’t clear out the Matlal Were within days, we will be fighting for our lives against the Confederation.”
“No! The rogue hasn’t been caught because no one put the clues together. No one has been thinking it’s one person. Well they are now, and it’s not just a detective in the PD, it’s the frigging FBI. With a project team that’s looking at all sorts of anomalies and which has landed right here in Denver. If they aren’t already suspecting there’s a paranormal community, they will soon, and the rogue could be what triggers that.”
“Yes, but what Ricky says is right, too,” Felix said. “We need the Matlal cleared out in a matter of days. If we end up fighting for our lives against the Confederation, that’s an even bigger signpost to us than the rogue.”
“A true dilemma,” Noble agreed. “I advise, again, discussing with Altau the possibility of assistance against the Matlal Were…”
“No!” Felix made a chopping motion with his hand. “The Confederation and Altau both want to take away from us the very individuality that makes us a pack. The only difference is the speed of it.”
“I disagree, but anyway, they wouldn’t be able to help much at the moment,” I said, and heads turned back to me. “The residual effect of Matlal.”
“Athanate politics,” sneered Felix. He glanced at his watch. “We’ve overrun.” He pointed at me. “You have to be well away from here.”
Noble got up and exchanged looks with Felix. There was a silent communication between them.
I tried to catch Alex’s eye as Noble herded me toward the door, but his head was down.
I was hating it, but Alex’s way of acceptance was better. There wasn’t an alternative at the moment. If I needed the pack, I had to accept the pack rules. So much for manipulating Felix into a position. Instead, I’d had the stark choices laid out; insanity, death or obedience. Felix had been so careful not to repeat that explicitly in front of Alex. Again, I got a sense of the whole picture facing Felix and a grudging admiration for his handling it. If he’d openly threatened me again, Alex would have responded. This way, he’d made progress toward keeping both Alex and me in check.
And exactly what major business was coming up that would be important enough to close this conversation? Was Alex being held back to split him from me, or was he involved in whatever happened next?
“Meet us later,” Ricky called to me. “8 p.m. at the Sten Tallrik restaurant in SoCo. We’ll brief you on the rogue and the hunt for Matlal’s pack.”
As we reached the front door, Felix came out of the living room and held up a warning finger. “You can be briefed on the hunt for the Matlal pack, you can assist planning, but you will not get involved in any fighting. That’s an order. Now, go.”
Salute the uniform.
Noble pushed me outside, before my inclination to snap back could get me into more trouble.
He led me to his Volvo and opened the door, but only to reach inside.
He handed me a business card. No address, but his first name was Theodore and his cell was listed.
“When can you make time to talk on Wednesday?” he said.
“But I’m already being briefed tonight—”
“This is not about the rogue and the rival pack. It’s about you and what you need to do to become Were. It’s about your being able to function efficiently while you do that, so think of it as every bit as important as Felix’s tasks.”
Hell. Someone willing to help me. I mentally picked myself up off the floor.
“Lunch,” I said. “1 p.m. Where will you be?”
“At the Psychiatric Center in Centennial. Let’s meet at the seafood restaurant at Peoria and Arapahoe.”
“Done.”
The woman who’d shown us in earlier appeared around the side of the house, driving a rusty Chevy pickup that must have been forty years old. Noble opened the passenger door for me and I slid in onto the scuffed leather bench seat.
Noble walked back to the house.
“Where?” the woman asked. Not going to be a chatty drive, apparently, but on the upside she wouldn’t be asking me to go shopping with her either.
“Aurora,” I said.
If I was going to have to wait till tonight for a briefing on the rogue and Matlal’s pack, I had interests of my own to look out for.
Chapter 9
“Rom! That your skinny ass hanging out the truck?”
Aurora’s best garage was hidden away off the main drag, and its best mechanic was reaching behind the engine of a long Buick. It looked as if the car was trying to eat him.
“Funny woman.” Rom backed out from under the hood and we grabbed forearms, slapped hands and bumped fists. Either he changed it every time, or I always got it wrong. He laughed.
“What I got that you after today? Not my ass.”
There was nothing wrong with his ass at all, but I had my hands full. Theoretically.
“Jofranka here?”
He shook his head, and gave a wave. That probably meant his niece was back at home, cleaning, cooking for her brothers, and trying to keep her father from drinking. Rom did what he could, and Jofranka spent any free time here, or down the Liu Leung Kwan, helping out.
“Is her bike here?”
He nodded. She left any valuable possessions here rather than at home. The bicycle was only a cheap Chinese import, but it’d fetch the price of a bottle of rotgut.
“You think she’d be okay if I borrowed it for an hour?”
“She’d be fine. Don’ want my Harley?”
“Thanks, but nothing that can be traced,” I said and left it at that. One of the things I loved about Rom was he just accepted I knew what I was doing. And his curiosity never reached his mouth.
The bike was hanging from a hook inside Rom’s apartment, and her helmet with it.
Perfect. I wound my hair up, loosening the helmet grip and fitting everything inside.
“Borrow your shades too?”
He handed over the insect eye glasses he used for riding his Harley, and my disguise was complete. I’d have preferred to be disguised in Lycra, but the sweats would do. No one was going to recognize me cycling past.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
It was as easy to get around Aurora on the bike as it was in a car. Ten minutes after I left Rom’s, I was cycling past my old landlady’s house.
I’d had to leave when Hoben found out I lived there. I’d brought danger to the Desiartos’ lives. Mrs. Desiarto had liked me, but after a booby trap of Hoben’s almost killed her, she hadn’t been sorry to see me go.
There was a dark green SUV par
ked at the end of the street. Not too close, but close enough for a guy lurking behind those tinted windows to see anyone going in and out.
I took the next left and in another ten minutes I passed Mom’s.
This one was a panel van, in industrial blue. I gritted my teeth and concentrated on cycling away at a steady pace. A right turn and a glance down the next street showed another van. Front and back under surveillance.
These weren’t amateurs. Ops 4-16 was in town and they were trained to the same standard as Ops 4-10.
I had gone by too quick to check, but they’d probably drilled a small hole in the side of the van. They’d be filming through that hole, and a cyclist going back for a second pass might catch someone’s attention. For that matter, they might have video feeds from both sites and someone smart enough to put it together.
I didn’t dare attack the watchers. I had no weapons and there’d be live comms between sites. There’d be backup close at hand. Even if I did get away with it, any attack would only serve to focus attention on Mom or Mrs. Desiarto.
I couldn’t not do something either. At some point, Petersen would escalate. It’d be the easiest thing in the world for him to take Mom and force me out of hiding.
If I’d put this operation together—hunting down a woman in Denver—there wouldn’t be much hope for my target, if she was alone.
Good thing I wasn’t alone.
Before I escalated this, I wanted to check for Nagas watching my office, but that needed to be done on foot. I headed back to drop off the bike and bum a lift from Rom.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“Well, now, Ms. Farrell, like your former colleague, you surely are full of the most fascinating information.”
I was talking Agent Ingram through the Naga stake-outs over the phone.
“I’m glad you’re finding it interesting, but I’m kinda hoping for some action here.” The demon that lives in my throat—and too often gets me in trouble—tried to double up the short syllables to match his drawl.