SECRET OF THE WOLF

by Susan Krinard

  "Your stubbornness is almost admirable. But it doesn't matter now."

  Johanna eyed the door behind him. What she needed was a diversion, one that would allow her to grab her gun.

  "Why doesn't it matter?" she asked, shuffling a step forward. "You cannot expect me to remain silent. I can make things very uncomfortable for May's father. Ingram may be powerful, but, as you said, I am extremely stubborn."

  "You're hardly in a position to threaten," he said pleasantly.

  "I do not fear for my reputation, professional or otherwise, if sacrificing it means saving May. And if you intend to use that"—she nodded toward his gun and moved another step—"you'll hardly draw attention away from your patron, or yourself."

  "You're right. And if it were my intention to take May to her father, I might even be concerned. But that was never my true object, Johanna."

  She checked her subtle forward motion. "What?"

  "My dear girl, have I managed to surprise you? How delightful." He smiled. "The focus of all my efforts—my seeking of your acquaintance and that of May's father, my pursuit of the girl, everything I've done since we met—has been another of your patients. Can you guess which one?"

  The face of each of the Haven's residents flashed through her mind in the space of a second. It could be any one of them, except possibly Oscar—each had his or her own past secrets even she didn't know.

  But, without so much as a single iota of corroborative evidence, her intuition told her the answer.

  "Quentin," she whispered.

  "Excellent. You're a bright woman, for a human."

  The hair rose on the back of her neck. "Who are you?"

  "Quentin knows me. We're old friends."

  Behind him, the door groaned. Bolkonsky leaped about, graceful as a dancer. Johanna reached into her pocket and pulled out the gun. Bolkonsky thrust out one arm without even looking at her, knocking the gun from her hand. Then he hit her in the chest, and all the air poured from her lungs. She fell to her knees, gasping, just as Bolkonsky yanked the door open to reveal the man on the other side.

  "Quentin!" May cried.

  Johanna peered through the black spots that crowded her vision. Quentin stood in the doorway, hands at his sides, staring at Bolkonsky. Quentin, not Fenris. The difference was plain to her heart, if not her eyes. She had no voice to call out a warning.

  "Quentin," Bolkonsky said. "It's been a long time."

  "Stefan Boroskov," Quentin said, dull surprise in his voice. His gaze found Johanna, and May just behind her. "Let them go."

  "I think not." Bolkonsky—Boroskov—retrieved Johanna's gun, tucked it under his coat, and gestured with his own weapon. "Come in, old friend. We have so much to talk about."

  Quentin had expected disaster, but hardly of this magnitude. He could ill afford the luxury of astonishment.

  He walked into a room half-familiar in its rank decay, and came to a stop between Johanna and Boroskov. His thoughts were reluctant to focus, but this was the time above all when he must remain master of his mind.

  That brittle clarity was all he had with which to face one of his family's oldest enemies.

  Stefan Boroskov, who he'd last seen in England five years ago. Boroskov, with Johanna and May. Quentin knew how May had come to be here—Fenris had brought her. Johanna had surely followed in search of one or both of them. But Boroskov…

  "Now that we're all together," the Russian said, "I think we should have formal introductions. If you please, Quentin?"

  He ignored Boroskov and spoke to Johanna. "This was your Bolkonsky, wasn't he?"

  "Yes." She tried to convey some message with her eyes that he couldn't interpret. "That is what he called himself."

  "And I never suspected." He turned back to his enemy. "How did you contrive that, Boroskov? You stayed away from the Haven, but I should have smelled you."

  "You didn't notice the scent of cologne about Johanna's person?" he asked. "I've found that it masks subtler odors wonderfully well."

  "You have execrable taste in cologne."

  "Ah. I'm wounded to the quick." Boroskov touched his heart. "Yes, to Johanna I was Feodor Bolkonsky, fellow practitioner to the insane and mentally afflicted, spokesman for little May Ingram's bereaved father."

  "Who is he?" Johanna demanded, her gaze fixed on Boroskov. She moved to Quentin's side, her shoulder brushing his. The contact sent his pulse spiralling. "Why has he done this, Quentin? What does he want with you?"

  Of course. Boroskov had tried to kidnap May, but the girl wasn't what he wanted. His failure had been temporary. His real prey had come to him.

  "Such a curious human," Boroskov commented. "Perhaps you ought to explain, Quentin, before she grows faint with confusion."

  Quentin laughed, the movement hurting his chest. "Johanna? You don't know her, Boroskov."

  "But I do. Please, the introductions."

  Quentin bowed with heavy irony. "Johanna, may I present Stefan Boroskov," he said, deliberately omitting the Russian's title. "His family and mine have been acquainted for many generations. He is… like me."

  Johanna understood. "A loup-garou," she said. She reached behind her to touch May's arm.

  "Ah, she knows!" Boroskov said. "My informant at the Haven did not."

  "Your informant?" Johanna put in.

  "Irene DuBois. She gave me information about you and the Haven even before I first contacted you, my dear doctor. We loups-garous have certain… talents. I would have learned all I needed to know even had Irene not been so easy to manipulate. Because of her eagerness to cooperate, and her considerable acting talents, I was able to conveniently arrange my various distractions." He clucked at Johanna. "You didn't keep your records and notes locked away. Not at all wise."

  "That explains—" Johanna began. Her expression hardened. "You promised to take Irene away in exchange for her help in kidnapping May."

  "Among other things. But those are mere details. Of course Irene didn't know of Quentin's nature, nor my own. Yet you and May do. Who else among your patients has guessed, I wonder?"

  "None," Quentin lied. By now at least two others did, but he wasn't about to jeopardize them by suggesting otherwise. Boroskov despised humans, and would not tolerate a perceived threat of any kind. "Did you think I'd go about advertising it?"

  "Who knows what a drunkard might do in his cups? Did you ever cure him of that, Johanna? But I digress. You were about to elucidate our relationship, Quentin, when I so rudely interrupted."

  Quentin grasped at the change of subject. "Of course." He turned to Johanna. "The Forsters and the Boroskovs have been… at odds for many years. Five years ago, Stefan and his brother attempted to kill my brother, Braden, the earl of Greyburn, in a treacherous fight, hoping to capture the leadership of the loups-garous. The Boroskovs lost, and Braden sent them home with their tails between their legs. He chose not to kill them, though it was his right to do so." He smiled, showing his teeth. "Apparently it was a mistake."

  Boroskov shook his head. "I don't know how much you've told her before, Quentin, but I fear you haven't made matters any less confusing for our doctor. You see, my dear girl, he has not defined the political complexities of our society, to which few humans are privy. He has also neglected to mention the reason behind his family's hatred for mine."

  "Milena," Quentin said. "His sister and Braden's former wife, who betrayed and blinded him before she herself died."

  As he expected, Boroskov's face contorted in anger. "Was murdered. Alas, that I don't have time to explain the truth, Johanna."

  "Your society," Johanna said to Quentin, as if Boroskov hadn't spoken. "Are there so many of you?"

  "We're scattered, but there are still a few hundred families working to preserve our race," Quentin said. "Within human society, we live as humans. Away from it, we have our own rules, our own way of life. It is not always an ideal existence."

  "For good reason," Boroskov said. "We are superior, and yet we live like whipped curs, hiding in our den
s. And that is why, decades ago, your grandfather and my father developed the great Cause of attaining dominance over humanity.

  Quentin's muscles seized up. Grandfather. The presence seething below the surface of his thoughts took strength from his instinctive reaction. "That may have been your Cause," he said with an effort, "but it was never my brother's. He wished only to save our kind from extinction."

  "Your brother turned from the path set by those stronger and wiser than he," Boroskov said. "He perverted the Cause into something paltry and wretched."

  "He defeated you."

  "Temporarily, yes. But his lack of ruthlessness is one of his weaknesses, and the reason why I am here now."

  "Why are you here, Boroskov? What do you want with me, and Johanna?"

  Boroskov tilted his gun toward the floor. "You may well wonder. In these past few years of following your progress, you've never shown any sign of remembering."

  "Following me?"

  "Oh, not personally. Not until the past six months. I had trusted human servants, aware of our secrets, tracking your movements and sending back their observations. You were so caught up in your own miseries that you were oblivious to their presence."

  Quentin recalled a hundred times when he had ignored the sense of being watched. It was a pathetic werewolf indeed who could not detect a human follower. But he had little self-respect to lose.

  "You are about to ask why I had you followed," Boroskov prompted.

  "The question had occurred to me." Quentin glanced at Johanna and subtly pushed her behind him. May was quiet as a mouse. "You said I showed no signs of remembering. Remembering what?"

  "That is part of my story. Patience." He waved Johanna and May toward the dilapidated sofa. "Sit down, dear doctor, and take the child with you."

  Johanna looked to Quentin. He nodded, and she led May to the couch. She did not sit.

  "Your brother, Braden, inherited the Cause without understanding its true purpose," Boroskov said. "We shall never know how much your grandfather, the previous earl, told him. Perhaps he died before he could reveal all his plans." He shook his head. "The arranged marriages between our scattered families, to restore our blood to its former strength and numbers, was only a small part of his Cause. In time, your grandfather and my father intended that our people should take their rightful places as rulers of the world."

  Quentin laughed until his belly knotted in pain, and laughed harder still at Boroskov's expression. "World conquest? When most of us can't even meet every five years without squabbling like infants?"

  "Because Braden cannot rule as a leader must. But the former earl and my father made a pact, to develop a means of ensuring that the true Cause would not be subverted. And that is where you come in, Quentin."

  "Of course," Quentin said, catching his breath. "You want to use me to take revenge on Braden, or force him to step down. Surely you can't believe I would cooperate."

  "I am disappointed in you, my boy," Boroskov said. "Nothing nearly so obvious." He met Quentin's eyes in a direct stare, werewolf to werewolf. "You were to play a very special role in our future plans. And from my observations, you may be what we had hoped for."

  "Me?" Quentin's throat was too raw for laughing, but he managed a rasping chuckle. "I was never good for much of anything—certainly not for your Cause. I got away before Braden could pin me to some female of his choosing." He wiped at his eyes. "Did you want me to take Braden's place?"

  "Hardly. That role is mine. But you will be at my right hand."

  "You have a very strange sense of humor, Boroskov."

  "I am not laughing." He adjusted the fit of his glove, dangling his gun from one finger. "I told you that your grandfather and my father made a separate, secret pact. They knew that our goal of conquest would not be an easy one, or swift. It would take many generations to achieve. And over those generations, we would require soldiers who would be trained and willing to commit whatever acts we might deem necessary in pursuit of our goals."

  "Soldiers," Quentin repeated.

  "Soldiers stronger and faster than any human. And ruthless, disciplined from childhood to obey their leaders without question."

  "Murderers, you mean," Quentin said, struck with a sudden chill. "Assassins."

  "Quite. When the time came, such specially trained detachments would be sent into the field to remove select human leaders, businessmen whose assets would become our own—any who might conceivably stand in our way. But first we had to learn how to create such a special 'army.' Your grandfather, and my father, chose one each of their offspring upon whom to experiment."

  Quentin couldn't respond. He saw the cellar, smelled the sweat of his own fear and blood. Grandfather…

  "They chose their subjects as young children, to allow for the greatest tractability of character. There was a risk that the subjects might be damaged in the attempt, so your grandfather chose you as the most expendable."

  Quentin's teeth ground together with an audible crack.

  "Your instruction was begun when you were a boy," Boroskov said. "You were to be broken to your grandfather's will by any means necessary, become indifferent to murder and absolutely obedient.

  "You see, my brother—you were meant to be a killer."

  Johanna felt for the seat behind her and fell into it. May gave a soft whimper. Quentin was a statue, staring at Boroskov as if the Russian had bespelled him with his evil.

  "You do remember something of those days, don't you?" Boroskov asked, almost gently. "I see it in your eyes. Your grandfather's methods were harsh, no doubt, but necessary. I have none of his notes on his procedures, but I can guess what he did."

  "The cellar," Quentin whispered, as if he didn't realize he spoke. Johanna rose to go to him, but Boroskov pointed his gun in her direction.

  "No. Your usefulness is past, my dear doctor. No more coddling. He is mine, now."

  "You are wrong," she said. "He belongs to himself."

  "Cling to your illusions if you must," he said. "You, too, know of his sufferings, do you not? You have discovered many of his secrets. But you cannot imagine what it is like to be one of us. I will be—I am—closer to Quentin than any other living being. For I was my father's selection as one of the new army."

  Johanna met his gaze and understood. If Quentin's form of madness had been born in the tortures he'd endured in his grandfather's cellar, then Boroskov's came from the same source.

  "Yes, my father trained me," he said. "I did not break. I grew stronger. I saw what had to be done. But somewhere, somehow, Quentin's instruction faltered. He broke free of his grandfather's influence in his adolescence, and for a time we believed he was a loss to us."

  Johanna took another step toward Quentin, disregarding Boroskov's threat. "You are not a failure, Quentin."

  "No, he is not. When he ran from England, from the skirmish his brother won over me, I knew he had begun to recall those things he'd tried to forget. The training he'd rejected. His deep and binding brotherhood to me."

  "No," Quentin croaked.

  "Why deny it? You feel the truth already. Yes, you escaped your grandfather. When you came of age, you joined the Army and went to India. Even then I was watching you, and waiting. I was not disappointed. It was there that your grandfather's careful work began to bear fruit." He smiled sympathetically. "Do you remember the time when you single-handedly rescued your men from ambush by the tribesmen? You killed eight of the enemy, they said. They called you a hero, but they were afraid. You were something they had never seen before—a berserker, who did not leave the field until every foe was dead."

  "God," Quentin said, his face stark with horror.

  "The necessary instincts were coming to the fore—to kill your enemies without mercy. But you were undirected. You did not yet have a cause that bound you. You returned to England, and led a meaningless life of pleasure and forgetfulness. But that came to an end when I arrived at Greyburn to challenge Braden."

  "I was a coward."

 
; "No. You felt drawn to me, to what we shared. You had begun to sense what you were, felt the stirring of your blood at the sight of violence. So you ran. But you could not run from your destiny. It followed you here, to America. My men reported the many times your training rose unbidden, to put the humans in their place."

  "I killed," Quentin said hollowly, making it a question.

  "No. But you created enough havoc to prove that you had what we required. Each time you moved on, losing yourself in drink, as if you could escape what you knew you were destined to be. Each time, the warrior within you could not be restrained. All it needed was discipline, and a master to temper your violence. I will be the one to complete what your grandfather began."

  Slowly Quentin's expression relaxed, and he looked at Johanna with full comprehension. It was as if everything he had wrestled with became clear in an instant. Just as it had for Johanna. Her heart ached for him.

  "Why did you involve Johanna and May?" he asked.

  "When I first followed you to San Francisco, I was prepared to seek you out. But you proved surprisingly elusive, until I was able to track you to the Napa Valley. There, I learned of Doctor Schell's new patient, and obtained informants who could give me the information I needed—most notably Irene DuBois. From her, I learned of Johanna's other patients, including May.

  "It soon became clear to me that you had indeed located a haven, a place where you might find the help you sought, the support that would make it easier for you to resist. I had to pry you loose. Miss Ingram's situation presented the ideal opportunity to disrupt your life at the Haven, and pull Johanna's attention from you. I had Irene look through Dr. Schell's notes, and she told me that May was essentially in hiding from her father, a wealthy businessman in San Francisco."

  "You forced Irene to obey you?" Johanna demanded.

  "He could do it, Johanna," Quentin said, his voice betraying no trace of emotion. "Our kind have mental abilities humans do not. He could make her do as he chose, and erase her memory of the events."

  "Indeed, but force was hardly necessary," Boroskov said. "I merely turned her thoughts from certain subjects, and encouraged her in others."