Bad Wolf

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Sean would shit a brick,” Broderick said, sounding delighted by the prospect. He peered at the screen, his reflected face next to hers, and scanned the lines of code with no comprehension in his eyes. “You really know what all that means?”

  Joanne kissed his cheek. “Yep.”

  “It’s so different from what I know. I like things I can hold, can touch.”

  “It seems ephemeral, but it’s not,” Joanne said, trying to explain. “Coding is like a tool—you use it to make things work, to do what you need it to do. When I was a kid, I looked at a computer not like a mysterious box I didn’t know how to work, but as something I wanted to reach inside, to unlock its secrets. I asked myself how I could use a computer to build something for me—like a game for me to play—and I started learning.”

  “Could you teach me?”

  Joanne started at the question. Broderick’s voice was gruff, but she caught the wistful note he tried to cover.

  “You seriously want to learn programming?”

  Broderick shrugged. “Why not? Everyone thinks I’m a dumb-ass, not much good for anything. I just fight people and give my brothers and aunt grief.”

  “You take care of your family,” Joanne said firmly. “You’re taking care of my family. That’s your thing, what you do. Taking care of people.”

  He grunted. “Sounds glamorous.”

  “Programming isn’t easy,” Joanne said. “Basic stuff isn’t too bad, but as you get into it, you have to learn to think in a different way, in a different language. It’s frustrating, and sometimes totally boring.”

  “Huh. Sounds like my whole life.”

  “Think about it,” Joanne said. “It takes dedication.”

  “I have dedication, sweetheart, trust me.” He studied her quietly a moment. “I just want to understand what you do.”

  The words were sincere, and so was the look in Broderick’s gray eyes.

  Joanne’s heart squeezed, warmth flowing through her. “You know, I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  Broderick barked a laugh. “In that case, you don’t get out much.”

  Joanne traced the back of his hand. “I don’t mind staying in.”

  Broderick rumbled under his breath and brushed a kiss to her neck. The caress led to another intense kiss, then Joanne took her attention reluctantly back to the screen, starting to run programs that would tell her more specifically what the hacker had been up to.

  “If you get into the Guardian Network,” Broderick asked after a time, “will you know what she was doing, why she wanted in? Will that help us catch her?”

  “Maybe.” Joanne sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to promise anything.”

  “Then let’s get you in,” Broderick said, voice brisk. “I want to find this bitch and put her out of our misery. I have more important things to do than worry about getting tranqued in the ass again.”

  Joanne shared his anger. She wanted to face the woman who’d dared hurt the man she was coming to love, and who’d caused another Shifter to die.

  “Sean might have to give me a password,” Joanne said. “If that’s even how the Guardians access this thing. Maybe that’s why the hacker needed the sword.” She deflated. “I’m thinking Sean won’t let me in, in any case. I doubt he or any other Guardian will want me poking around their databases.”

  If she could get in herself, without their help, however …

  Joanne’s fingers prickled in anticipation, and her sense of adventure and curiosity rose. Mountain climbers got excited about attempting the next higher peak, then the highest; hackers had the same thrill when determined to break into the unbreakable. Joanne recognized the symptoms—increased heart rate, quickening breath, sweating palms, cold fingers, a smile that stretched across her face.

  Broderick was watching her. Joanne flexed her hands, wriggling her fingers. “Let me try something …”

  She started typing, high with the buzz of the challenge.

  Half an hour later, she sat back, tired and disgruntled. “Damn it. I should probably just call Sean.”

  “Will this help?” Broderick opened his hand to reveal the medallion. “It’s connected to the Guardians, and the hacker killed to get it.” His mouth hardened, his rage fresh.

  Joanne lifted the medallion from his palm, and Broderick surprisingly didn’t stop her. He kept his gaze on Joanne as she examined the disc, turning it over in her fingers. One side of the medallion held the carved Celtic knot, surrounded by a thin, scalloped circle; the other was flat, unadorned silver.

  “I don’t have a slot for this,” Joanne said, making her voice light. She lifted her laptop, showing Broderick the thin slits in its sides for everything but a round piece from a Guardian’s sword.

  Broderick shrugged. “I don’t know how you would use it … Wait …” His gaze flicked back to the screen. “I think you’re in,” he said, pointing.

  Joanne’s hand had moved absently to the keyboard while she’d examined the medallion, but now she snapped her attention to what was happening on the monitor.

  Her lines of code were dissolving. In their place rose soft green letters that took up the entire screen. The letters and symbols looked like the markings she’d seen on the hilt of Sean’s sword, representing a language Joanne didn’t know.

  Then, as she and Broderick watched, the runes faded, and English letters took their place.

  You have illegally breached the Guardian Network.

  Those words vanished, and another message blossomed.

  Welcome, friend.

  Chapter Eleven

  Broderick heard Joanne gasp. He peered at the screen but saw only Fae runes, large and pulsing. He had no clue what they said.

  Joanne was staring at them, open-mouthed, her eyes moving across them with perfect comprehension.

  “You understand that?” Broderick asked.

  “Sure.” Joanne nodded, enraptured. “It’s in English.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Broderick leaned forward and peered at the runes as though that would make them intelligible.

  “Yes, it is.” Joanne gave him a puzzled look then she switched her gaze to the medallion in her left hand. “Wait …” She set the disc on the table with a click and stared excitedly at the screen. “Now I see only runes again. You hold it, and tell me what you see.”

  Broderick snatched up the medallion. Nothing on the screen changed. “Nope. All I see is Fae writing. Shifters shouldn’t use Fae script—I’ve never understood Guardians.”

  Joanne held her hand out for the medallion again. She didn’t simply try to grab it from him, and for that Broderick was grateful. He was happy to hand it to her willingly, but something inside him was ready to fight if anyone tried to take it without his permission.

  Joanne held the medallion in one hand and touched the keyboard with the other. “English again.” Joanne couldn’t mask her elation. “Maybe it only works if you hold it and are a programmer.”

  Broderick shook his head, not bothered. “The Guardian Network is full of bizarre magic, like the swords. It has a mind of its own. I really don’t want to know what’s in there, so it’s just as well.”

  Joanne looked relieved, and Broderick warmed. Joanne had been worried Broderick would be upset if she could read the words and he couldn’t—that the medallion had chosen her.

  She cared about his feelings. That fact was worth more to him than whatever the hell was in the Guardians’ secret files.

  Joanne’s fingers hovered over the keys. “Now that I’m in, I’m not sure what to ask. The secret to life?”

  “Oh, Goddess, don’t ask it that,” Broderick said quickly. “It will tell you some cryptic shit that will have you journeying to the top of a mountain or to the middle of the ocean looking for something no one really wants found. Or dying a horrible death just as the answer hits you.”

  “Good point.” Joanne started typing. “How about—What hacker attacks has the database has been experiencing?
Where are they coming from, and what is the hacker looking for? Except I don’t know how to code in this language … Oh.”

  “Oh… what?” Broderick came alert. “What oh?”

  “It’s translating for me.” Joanne smiled happily. “What a handy network.”

  Broderick wiped sweat from his upper lip. “Shit, don’t scare me like that. What’s it saying?”

  “Not much.” Joanne had stopped typing. Lines of tiny Fae runes moved on the screen, scrolling upward in fits and starts. “I think it’s thinking.”

  “Be careful what you say to it. Fae magic is tricky, and so are Guardians.”

  Joanne cocked her head to look at him. Her hair was tangled from their lovemaking, her eyes warm with afterglow. “You all were very upset that the Goddess didn’t pick another Guardian up in Montana. Why? What happens if there isn’t one?”

  Broderick felt a qualm of disquiet. “I don’t really know. This has never happened before. At least not in my lifetime.” He lifted his hand and stroked one sleek curl on her head, unable to keep from touching her. “Every group of Shifters has to have a Guardian. In the old days, that meant each clan had their own. Even if the clan was scattered over hundreds of miles, the Guardian made the journey to send souls of dying Shifters to the Goddess. When we were rounded up, things got shaken around. Clans were split over different Shiftertowns, and now the Guardian of each Shiftertown does the ritual for everyone there, not just Shifters he’s related to. Across species too, which not all Shifters are happy with.”

  “So what happened to the extra Guardians?” Joanne asked. “If each clan had its own Guardian, and there are now several clans in a Shiftertown, wouldn’t there be more Guardians than Shiftertowns?”

  “No.” Broderick had never thought about it before. Mostly, he’d stayed away from Guardian business and didn’t let himself have any curiosity about what they did. Sean was a friend, but Broderick never asked him any questions about the Guardian side of his life. Safer that way. “There is one Guardian and one sword for every Shiftertown. It just worked out.”

  “How?”

  She loved the questions, did Joanne. “Hell if I know. Why don’t you ask the network?” Broderick gestured at the laptop, which was still “thinking.”

  Joanne turned to the screen, her hair moving against Broderick’s fingers. “I have the feeling it’s only going to give me answers to very specific questions, and clam up if I get greedy. Like a genie who grants three wishes. You have to ask carefully.”

  Broderick grunted. “Shifters don’t have genies, but we have a couple of trickster gods who are similar. Be careful what you wish for …”

  Joanne’s eyes went soft. “You know what I wish…?”

  Broderick seriously wanted to know, but at that moment, the laptop beeped. Joanne jumped and faced it, all business again. “A-ha! Gotcha, bitch.”

  Broderick tightened. “You found her? You know where she is?”

  “You bet I do. Or rather, the network knows and told me. I’ve got her access logs, the codes she ran …”

  “Where is she?” Broderick surged to his feet. “I’m going to grab her and pry some answers out of her.”

  Joanne’s cool hand on his arm brought him back down again. “I don’t mean I know where she is physically. But I know what computer she’s hacking from, how she’s trying to get in, what she’s looking at—and she doesn’t know I know.”

  Her excitement made her cheeks flush, her eyes shine. Broderick caught Joanne’s elation but at the same time, didn’t let himself become too hopeful. “How does that help us, exactly?”

  “It helps because I can not only figure out what she’s looking for but block her from finding it.” Joanne’s fingers began to dance on the keys. She clutched the medallion, using two fingers of that hand on the keyboard so she wouldn’t have to let go. “She hasn’t made it in yet, but she’s close.”

  “Wait a sec.” Broderick settled back in the chair but leaned forward to watch what Joanne did. “This hacker chick has the sword. We have only a little piece of the sword. So, why are we inside the Guardian Network and she’s not?”

  Joanne shrugged. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, her fingers flying, and Broderick realized she didn’t care at the moment. “The network likes us?” she suggested, offhand. “It knows we’re the good guys?”

  Broderick scrubbed at his close-cropped hair. “All this is making my head hurt. I liked it better when I was a dumb-ass fighter.”

  Joanne laughed, a sparkling sound. “Broderick, you are so not a dumb-ass fighter. But based on the code she’s writing, it looks like she’s searching for a specific thing. Let me find out what …”

  She trailed off, her focus tight on the screen, her fingers moving. Occasionally, Joanne muttered things like—“Oh, really? You thought you could hide your trail that way? You have no idea who you’re up against …”

  Joanne typed code, growled in frustration, or said Ha! in glee when she figured something out. Broderick watched her as the clock on the table moved from midnight to one a.m. to two.

  Finally Joanne paused, frowning. “What’s a portal?”

  Broderick came alert. He’d been studying Joanne’s soft shoulder and the breast her slipping blanket was baring.

  “Portal?” he asked sharply.

  Joanne nodded. “She’s looking for anything in the database on portals. Portals to what? She can’t mean computer ones—she’d already know that. Maybe places the Guardian Network leads that she can’t access any other way?”

  “No.” Broderick was on his feet, a leaden knot in the pit of his stomach. “Shut her out. Shut her out now.”

  ***

  Joanne looked up in surprise, her fingers stilling. Broderick’s face was gray, his eyes wide.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “If I shut her out, I won’t find exactly what she’s going for.”

  Broderick reached down and jerked Joanne’s hands from the keyboard. “She means portals to Faerie. That’s the kind of messed-up information the Guardians would protect.”

  Joanne blinked. She didn’t understand much about the Fae and the mystical place they called Faerie—she only knew Shifters hated Fae for many and various reasons.

  “There are already portals to Faerie, aren’t there?” she asked. “Andrea visits her father through one. There are also standing stones, right? Connor told me the story about the first sword—the Fae woman came to the sword smith through the standing stones.”

  “Yeah, there are known gates,” Broderick said. “The one in Shiftertown is protected by Andrea’s dad, and I doubt he’d let a human hacker woman through it. For standing stone gates, the biggest problem there is—you need standing stones. I haven’t seen many of those in the middle of Texas.” Broderick drew his finger and thumb down the side of his mouth. “I bet our hacker is trying to figure out how to open or build a portal to Faerie from anywhere she wants.”

  Joanne’s eyes widened. “Is that possible?”

  “If it is, the Guardians would know. They probably have conferences about it, or keep spreadsheets on it—that’s the kind of crazy shit Guardians would do.”

  “If she succeeded, what would happen?”

  Without waiting for his answer, Joanne turned back to the computer, drawing on her newest, most insidious code to block the other hacker and chase her back to whatever hole she was hiding in. Attaching a bug would shut the woman down for good.

  “Who the hell knows?” Broderick shrugged, fists balled. “The Fae might come pouring through, ready to slaughter us all. They made swords that work with the Collars to torture us into obedience. Fae want Shifters to be their slaves again, to drag us back to Faerie and make us their fighting beasts.” He broke off and made a scoffing sound. “They seriously need to get out more.”

  Joanne kept typing. “Why would a hacker want to help with that?”

  “I don’t know—maybe the Fae promised her riches and fame or eternal life or some other stupid-shit reward a human would b
elieve. They’ll use her and kill her, but she won’t understand that until too late.”

  “Well, none of that sounds good … Oops.”

  Broderick leaned close, his breath hot on her neck. “You’ve gotta stop saying things like that. Oops, what?”

  “She knows I’m here. She’s trying to sabotage me in return.” Joanne sucked in a breath. “Man, she’s good.”

  “Don’t sound so admiring.”

  “Can’t help it. It’s how you’d feel about a good fighter at the fight club. Whoa …” Joanne jerked her fingers from the keyboard. “Pull the cables. All of them. Fast, fast, fast.”

  She’d already pulled the Ethernet connection out of her laptop and shut down the router, but she knew her actions were likely futile. Computers never closed down that completely until you ripped their insides out, and even then …

  Broderick was busily jerking out all the cables he’d so painstakingly plugged in. Joanne shut down all the power strips, disconnecting them, undoing any cables, everything she and Broderick had set up.

  She blew out her breath when it was done, plunked down into her chair, and buried her face in her hands.

  “Did you stop her?” Broderick sat down close beside her, his body warming hers.

  “For now.” Joanne lowered her hands, feeling a small measure of satisfaction. “And I gave her something to think about.”

  Broderick laced an arm around her. After the virtual world of cold numbers and symbols it was nice to lean on a warm, real person. No one could be as real as Broderick.

  He flexed his hand. “I hate all this computer stuff. I need something I can punch with my fists.”

  “I guess you might get the chance, if she opens a gate, like you fear.”

  His body vibrated with his voice. “Don’t even want to think about that. Fae are nasty bastards, and they fight dirty. They made Shifters so they could loose us on their enemies while they sat back and kept their hands clean. I do not want anything to do with those dirtbags.”