The Frenzy Wolves

by Gregory Lamberson

  “The hunt for Gomez has obviously sidelined your primary objective.” Hollander looked at the faces around the room. “We’ll get Gomez one way or the other. Continue taking the calls and looking into leads, but don’t allow Gomez to consume all your time. He’s one man—or one Class L. Your priority is still to identify any and all Class Ls in New York City. That’s why we”—he gestured at Jim—“have brought in extra people to assist you.”

  Mace bit his tongue. Replacing fallen comrades wasn’t bringing in extra help. It was maintaining the status quo. The only additional people they had were the clerks.

  “Preliminary testing shows Gabriel Domini’s DNA is human. That’s unfortunate. You still have to bring in his brother, though. It’s entirely possible that Raphael Domini is a Class L.” He addressed Mace. “I want the file on their sister, Angela, reopened. I don’t like that she disappeared when she was so connected to the Manhattan Werewolf murders.”

  Mace avoided looking at Karol.

  “The bureau now has a confidential informant with detailed information about both the Brotherhood of Torquemada and the Class Ls.”

  Father Tudoro, Mace thought. He had watched Norton and a team of feds take Tudoro into custody at JFK.

  “This informant has connected several dots we uncovered going over the Brotherhood’s laptop, which you recovered in New Jersey.”

  Mace had lobbied Jim for access to the data contained in the laptop to no avail.

  Hollander tapped at his keyboard, and the face of an olive-skinned man with curly black hair filled the screen. “According to our source, this man is a Class L. His birth name is Frank Ninotos. For the last several years, he used the alias Elias Michalakis. He was the leader of a cell of Class Ls based in Greece. In Piraeus, the same members of the Brotherhood you extinguished in Newark kidnapped one of the Class Ls in Ninotos’s cell, secured explosives to his corpse, and dumped the body outside the Class Ls’ hiding place. The explosion killed every member of the cell but Ninotos, who disappeared.”

  Hollander pecked at his laptop again. A surveillance photo showed Ninotos in an airport. “Three weeks ago, Ninotos flew into Philadelphia under the name Panos Mircouri. We’ve been unable to trace his movements from that point on. If he’s still using that name, it hasn’t turned up in any credit card purchases or hotel registries. The timing of his arrival coincides with that of the Brotherhood, and we believe he came here because they did, perhaps to warn other Class Ls.

  “For the purpose of our mission, Elias Michalakis is his primary alias. Special Agent Norton will provide you with a list of his other aliases. If he’s in New York, we want you to find him. He’s as important as Gomez. One other thing: our informant insists that all three Dominis are Class Ls. If he’s right, I don’t know how Gabriel Domini fooled our test unless the hair sample was tampered with.”

  “I clipped that sample in front of Captain Mace,” Candice said in a frosty tone.

  “And I sealed the envelope according to protocol,” Mace said.

  “Bring Gabriel Domini in and administer the test again,” Hollander said. “Get urine and blood samples too.”

  “He may find that request excessive.”

  “I don’t care what objections he has. He’s our best lead. When you get him in here, make sure he tells you the location of his brother and sister. And since he claims he isn’t hiding, keep him under surveillance. According to our informant, the Brotherhood took Rhonda Wilson prisoner because she was a Wolf. Jason Lourdes was the collateral damage, not her.”

  Below the table, Mace clenched his fists. “Wilson gave us hair samples, and the corpses of her parents were human.”

  Hollander stared at him for a moment before answering. “That’s true. All the DNA tests we’ve conducted at Quantico verify that Wilson is human and her parents were too. That doesn’t change our informant’s sworn statement.”

  Mace didn’t want to put himself on the line for Rhonda if he could avoid it.

  “I’d say that calls the veracity of our informant into question,” Norton said.

  “I agree,” Hollander said. “For now. But we have to keep tabs on Wilson. Why don’t we have a current address for her?”

  “We do have an address for her,” Karol said. “A sublet on Staten Island.”

  Masking his surprise, Mace couldn’t help but look at Karol.

  “I entered it into the database this morning,” she said.

  “Good,” Hollander said. “Don’t lose track of her. I don’t like that our two most likely Class Ls tested human.”

  Savana crept up the squeaking wooden stairs, her gnarled hand sliding up the banister. Still naked, Gomez followed her. His feet made little noise, even though he weighed more than she did, but his breath came in short, wet rasps, like that of a dog. She had already showed him where she kept the car keys, which seemed to be his primary interest. She knew he wouldn’t leave her in peace, that he intended to kill and probably rape her.

  For the first time since Henry’s death, she felt good that he was no longer alive: he would have done something foolish and tangled with this killer, and something bad would have happened. At least he had gone peacefully in his sleep.

  This man is going to kill me.

  The thought played over and over in her mind.

  At the top of the stairs, she opened a bedroom door. “This was my husband’s extra room. I guess you could call it his study.”

  Gomez shoved her with the base of one palm, and she staggered inside. She caught herself against a bookcase filled with leather-bound editions of literary classics. Henry had received one a month for ten years through a subscription service.

  Gomez entered the sunlit room and studied the framed certificates on the far wall. “Your husband was a man of accomplishments.”

  Savana did not answer him.

  Gomez walked to where she stood and scanned the book titles. “He appreciated the classics.”

  Savana backed away from him into the middle of the room.

  Gomez selected a book and flipped through its pages. “The Call of the Wild by Jack London.”

  She knew this might be her only chance; she just wished she still possessed the speed and grace of her younger years. Pivoting on a heel, she jerked open the top drawer of the desk, pushed aside the Bible, and raised Henry’s loaded .32 revolver in both hands. Henry had kept the weapon there for as long as they had been married, and she had continued the tradition. It felt so heavy.

  Gomez smiled. Then he snapped the book shut, which caused her to flinch, and returned it to its space on the shelf. He raised his hands. “Don’t shoot.”

  Savana aimed the revolver at Gomez’s chest. “What kind of man are you, preying on an old woman?”

  His smile broadened. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I’ve changed my mind. I think I will eat you.” He took a step forward.

  Savana squeezed the trigger. The gun’s roar was deafening in the small room, even with her poor hearing. The recoil almost toppled her, and her wrists ached. The round tore into Gomez’s left pectoral. His body jerked to the left, a snarl forming on his lips. Savana fired again. This time, the round burrowed into the ribs on his right side. She fired a third shot, and a cloud of plaster dust puffed from the wall behind her quarry. Gomez turned to her. Taking careful aim, she fired into his stomach, and he fell to his knees.

  “That . . . hurt,” Gomez said, gasping. When he looked up at her, his face trembled with rage.

  Two shots left, Savana thought. She aimed at the man’s head.

  “Don’t do it,” Gomez said.

  “No jury in the world would convict me.”

  “Please, mommy. Let’s make nice.”

  “Monster.” She shot him again. This time the round disappeared inside his left collarbone. She expected him to scream. Instead, he roared.

  Gomez leapt off the floor, diving for her with surprising agility. In the second it took for him to reach her, black fur spread over every inch of his body. A clawed ha
nd swiped the gun away, and as he collided with her, his face assumed a lupine form. Screaming, Savana toppled onto the desk top.

  The creature that Gomez had become seized her wrists in his claws. He spread her arms wide apart and pulled her toward him, roaring in her face. His fur grew longer, his features more wolflike, and Savana smelled death on his breath.

  Carl watched the delicatessen from the front seat of the rental car, his camcorder at the ready. Customers entered; customers left. He listened to a news report on Gomez’s escape on the radio. However that turned out, at least he knew there was another true crime book in the incident. He had made some scratch off Gomez’s name. But why did the son of a bitch have to pull his disappearing act last night and derail his front-page news story?

  A truck driver carted stacks of two liter soda bottles inside and exited. Nothing of interest transpired, and he doubted his instincts. His lower back ached.

  “Screw this.”

  He turned off the engine, slid the camcorder into his coat pocket, and got out. Stretching his arms in the air, he looked from side to side and crossed the street. Three customers stood in line at the counter when he entered. He absorbed the interior in seconds: an older Korean woman worked the cash register, and a man—presumably her husband—made sandwiches at the meat counter. A round convex mirror looked down at him from one corner, a video camera from another. He made his way up and down the aisle, pretending to look for something.

  He didn’t get it. What had motivated Williams to drive all the way here from Chinatown, buy a sandwich, and drive back? And why had it taken her so long to get the sandwich? There was something about this place. There had to be. He knew it.

  Carl passed the refreshments refrigerators. He didn’t know how long he would be sitting in that car, and he didn’t want his bladder to force him to abandon his post. After circling the entire store, he went to the meat counter.

  The Korean man looked at him. “Yes?”

  “I’ll have a pastrami and Swiss on rye,” Carl said.

  The man made the sandwich. Nothing about him stood out. He set the bagged sandwich on the counter, and Carl took it to the register.

  The Korean woman rang it up. “Six dollars,” she said.

  Carl handed her a ten-dollar bill, and she gave him change.

  “Thank you,” she said in a singsong voice.

  Carl went outside. Fuck, he thought as he returned to his car. He got in and turned the ignition.

  “What the hell should I do now?” He stared at the deli, debating whether to return to Mott Street.

  Instead, he ate his sandwich and kept watching.

  With his furry body covered with sticky blood, Gomez staggered into the bedroom next to Henry Silvestri’s den and collapsed on the queen-sized bed. Slobbering saliva, he lay on his back with his knees raised. He hadn’t experienced pain from the old woman’s gunshots at first, but now each wound burned and throbbed.

  Staring at the ceiling with his chest rising and falling, he willed his body to Change. The Transformation into his human form took longer than the Transformation into a Wolf had, and it felt like bottling himself up rather than a release. As he took his weaker shape, the pain decreased. He groaned.

  How had he been so careless? He had smelled fear all over Savana. When she pointed the gun at him, his instincts told him he had nothing to fear. When the first bullet tore into his flesh and he felt no pain, he believed himself invulnerable. He knew now that his body must have gone into shock. The pain came minutes later while he feasted on the woman’s entrails. Now, with sweat covering his quivering flesh, he glanced at the wounds in his torso.

  They had closed.

  Gomez pressed his fingers to the wounds, and the pain returned. The wounds did not reopen, and the pain felt good. Blood slicked the bedcovers. Savana’s or his?

  Taking a deep breath, he Changed again. He had never attempted Transformation into Wolf Form so soon after turning human, and he found the shift easier than expected. He didn’t want to be human again but needed to complete the test. Another breath, another change. The regression of his fur tickled his insides. His muscles ached, and the sweat spackling his body cooled, the bloodied sheets clinging to him like a wet diaper. He examined his body. The bullet wounds had become scars.

  Gomez laughed, but he felt bitterness for the years he had wasted confined to his human form. None of his kind had sought him out, and none had shown him the way to his true self. He would teach himself everything he needed to learn, and then he would make the world pay in blood for neglecting him.

  Seventeen

  After parking his SUV in his driveway, Mace walked over to the motor patrol car at the curb, no longer double-parked. The female officer behind the wheel lowered her window.

  “How long have you been here?” Mace said.

  “Since shift change at 0400,” the officer said. “We’re staying on until midnight unless Dispatch wants us to pull overtime.”

  He looked at her partner, who appeared to be tall and skinny. “If either of you needs to use the restroom, you know which floor we’re on. Just call before you come up.”

  “Thanks,” the woman said.

  Mace went inside. As soon as he closed the inside door, the first-floor apartment door opened. He expected to see Eduardo. Instead, it was Eduardo’s wife, Anita.

  “Captain Mace.” Anita approached him. She had a tiny figure, and only the streaks of gray in her hair suggested her age. “We’ve been watching the news all day. This man Gomez, do you think he’ll come here? Is that why the police car’s outside?”

  “It’s just here as a precaution,” Mace said. “Everyone in the house is safe.”

  “Will you catch him soon?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Don’t worry about Mrs. Mace. I’m home all day, and Anna will be upstairs whenever you like.”

  “I appreciate that, but I don’t want any of you to worry.”

  “Don’t you worry. Just stop this man.”

  “I’ll send Anna down.” Mace climbed the stairs, hung his coat on a hook, and stepped out of his shoes. When he entered the apartment, multicolored lights blinked on and off in the living room. Sniper greeted him, wagging his tail. Turning the corner, he took in the sight of a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments. Additional lights blinked in the window frames. Cheryl and Anna tossed tinsel onto the plastic tree.

  “Dada!” Patty ran toward him, fell, and got up.

  Mace swept her into his arms. “There’s my girl.”

  The toddler pointed at the tree. “Tree!”

  “I see that. A Christmas tree.”

  “’Rismas tree.”

  Cheryl moved before him, and they kissed.

  “We needed to do something cheerful, so Anna helped us decorate the tree,” Cheryl said.

  “Great,” Mace said. “Anna, you can go now. I think your mother could use the company. I smelled chicken and hot peppers down there.”

  “Okay,” Anna said. “I have some studying to do. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” Cheryl said.

  Anna kissed Patty’s cheek and squeezed her hand. “Good night.”

  “G’night.”

  Cheryl waited until Anna had closed the door behind her before asking, “Is there any news that they’re not reporting on TV?”

  Mace didn’t want to tell her the truth, but he knew that if he held back information she would sense it and drag it out of him. “Sing Sing’s security camera captured Gomez changing into a Wolf.”

  “Wolf,” Patty said.

  Cheryl’s posture wilted. “Oh, my God.”

  “FBI seized the footage and clamped down on the prison employees who saw it.”

  “That isn’t right.”

  “You’re not a reporter anymore, remember? And if you breathe a word of this you’d better get an extremely high-paying job, because I’ll be out of mine. Worse, I’ll be in jail. CIA, State, and Homeland Security all have an interest in this now.”


  “Can’t you just quit?”

  He handed Patty to her. “And lose my pension? I’ve put up with too much s-h-i-t to lose that now.” But the thought of finding something new to do had its appeal.

  “You’ve risked your life—too many times. When does it end? They’ll eat you alive without thinking about it twice.”

  “Don’t you feel safer at the moment, knowing I can provide protection?”

  Her voice remained firm. “I’d feel safer if you were home all day.”

  “What am I supposed to do, be a telemarketer?” He stroked her back. “I need to shower.”

  “Walk the dog first. Come on, Patty. Let’s put the star on the tree.”

  “I told the officers downstairs they can use our bathroom if they need to.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Sighing, Mace retrieved the dog leash. “Come on, boy.”

  Karol heard the soft throb of music when she entered her apartment. After setting her unopened bills aside with the others, she hung her coat in the closet and took off her shoes. In the kitchen, a pizza box rested on top of the stove. She moved the box onto the counter, then made her way to Rhonda’s room and knocked on the door.

  A moment later, the volume of the music decreased, and the door opened. Rhonda stood before her, her hair shaved close to the scalp on the sides and long on top. She had also dyed it blonde, and she wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off.

  “Wow,” Karol said.

  “I did it myself,” Rhonda said.

  “I hardly recognize you.”

  “I need to get out for some fresh air once in a while.” Her voice sounded softer than it had all week.

  “Did you go out today?”

  Rhonda shrugged. “I walked around a little.”

  “I see you’ve eaten already.”

  “There’s still some pizza left. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks, but I’m going to bed. I didn’t sleep last night, and I worked a double shift plus overtime. Do you need anything?”