by Stephen Cole
.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
This electronic edition published in July 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Working Partners Ltd 2004
The moral right of the author ahas been asserted
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ISBN 978 1 4088 1384 3
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Also by Stephen Cole
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The Wereling trilogy
Wounded
Prey
Resurrection
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The Thieves trilogy
Thieves Like Us
The Aztec Code
The Bloodline Cipher
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To my parents, Wendy and Tony Cole,
with love and gratitude
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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CHAPTER ONE
This is how it ends, Kate Folan thought.
She’d run into a blind alley. There was no way out, and her pursuers were right behind her. ‘Tom!’ she yelled, clutching the stitch in her side. ‘Tom, where are you?’
The biting Chicago wind seemed to snatch the words from her lips. No answer came back to her. All she heard was her breath as it came in sharp ragged gasps, clouding out into the freezing December air.
Kate wished desperately that Tom were here. When they’d realised the gang was following them, they’d fled, splitting up in the hope of confusing them. The gang had gone after Tom – but then a car had come out of nowhere and picked up her trail.
Smoothing long straggles of hair from her clammy forehead, Kate looked around frantically for somewhere to hide – someplace she’d overlooked.
There was nowhere.
The car slowly drew up, filling the entire alleyway, its headlights blinding her.
Then with a quiet click the driver’s door opened.
‘Stay away from me,’ Kate gasped.
Her words were answered with a hunting roar, followed by the hard smack of something heavy on metal.
A shadowy creature, sleek and sinewy, was now crouched on the hood of the car. It was somewhere between a wolf and a man, deep-chested and covered in dark, lustrous fur, its sharp ivory teeth bared.
Kate screamed and shrank away as the creature pounced towards her. But as it landed at her feet, she saw that its eyes were deep brown, soulful. Human eyes, that had resisted changing to the evil yellow glint of pure lupine. It was Tom. She fell to her knees beside him. ‘You found me,’ she breathed.
Tom turned his glance to the car blocking their way and roared defiantly, then shattered one of its glaring headlights with a swipe of his club-like paw.
Kate guessed his encounter with the gang must have brought on Tom’s lupine change. But she wondered uneasily how he had dealt with his attackers.
The car door opened. Kate heard a familiar rough English voice.
‘You stupid hairy sod, Tom Anderson. This is a hire car and I’ve got no accidental damage cover.’
‘Blood?’ Kate called out in disbelief.
‘Out for blood, the trouble you two have put me to.’
The owner of the voice climbed out of the driver’s seat into full view. Adam Blood. Tall and clean-cut, in a heavy black overcoat; a rueful half-smile on his handsome face, snowflakes catching on his dark floppy hair.
Tom relaxed his fighting stance and sank back on his haunches.
‘You scared me half to death!’ Kate yelled at Blood. She shook her head, words spilling out of her mouth in a great flood of relief. ‘First of all you arrange to meet us and then don’t show. Then we get chased through the streets by a gang. And …’ She slammed her hand down on the dented car hood. ‘And then you come after me in this thing!’
‘You ran so damned fast, I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose you!’ Blood protested. ‘You two have been bloody hard to find!’
‘Well, congrats. You did it. In the end.’ Half-slipping in the snow, Kate went forward and grabbed Blood in a clumsy embrace. ‘Thanks,’ she said, shivering with cold and shock.
‘This kind of thanks I can handle,’ he murmured, his breath warming her ear as he hugged her back. ‘But Tom’s not going to jump up and lick me, is he?’
‘Ha ha.’ She glanced behind her. Tom was lying down now. With the immediate danger passed, his human self would soon begin to reassert control. ‘I thought you were never going to show,’ she hissed into Blood’s neck reproachfully.
‘Ditto. But do you really think I’d miss out on a jolly Christmas reunion, Trolly?’
Kate smiled. Trolly was short for Troll Lover, the alias she always used online. Troll Lover was the only name he’d had for her for almost two years, and he still liked to use it.
To Kate, it felt like a name from another lifetime.
As she clung to Blood, exhausted, the scent of his expensive cologne took her back to the time she’d finally met him in the flesh in New Orleans, and those first frightening days on the run. Once the head of a misfit group keeping tabs on the dark, supernatural side of the city, he had become a good friend to her and Tom. More than that, he’d saved their lives.
‘Come on,’ said Blood, extricating himself from her hug. ‘It’s brass monkeys out here. Get in the car and I’ll take you to whatever fleapit you’re staying in.’
‘We’ve got a place in Uptown,’ Kate told him, ‘and yes, it is a fleapit, but I can’t wait to get back there. Thanks for the lift.’
‘You’re welcome. And you are too, Tom, as long as you’re not moulting…’ He trailed off, peering over Kate’s shoulder. ‘Oh.’
Kate turned and saw that Tom had transformed back to his human form. A little sting went through her at the sight of his naked body face down in the slushy snow, slim and muscular. ‘He’ll freeze to death,’ she muttered to Blood. ‘Give me your coat.’
‘Just call me Santa,’ sighed Blood, unbuttoning his heavy overcoat. ‘Three days early.’
Kate took the coat. Her face felt fiery as she crouched down and wrapped it around Tom, who was starting to
shiver. He looked up at her, his brown eyes glinting under his dark brows, hair damp and spiky. She just wanted to gather him up and hold him close. Not like a friend, not in the way she’d just hugged Blood, but …
Don’t go there, she told herself, rising back up and helping Tom to his bare feet.
‘Those assholes had me trapped,’ he muttered through chattering teeth. ‘They herded me into an alleyway, then …’
Kate shuddered. ‘They attacked you?’
‘It was more like they were just … goading me. Pushing me around. Trying to …’ Tom broke off, looked into her eyes. ‘Trying to make me change.’
‘And they got what they wanted,’ Kate muttered. ‘You think they knew you were lupine?’
He nodded. ‘They had badges on their jackets – silver wolf’s heads …’ He clutched the overcoat tightly about him. ‘Anyhow, I took them by surprise. Leaped past them before they could stop me.’
‘Look, are you going to say hello to me or what, you rude little sod?’ called Blood impatiently.
Tom turned to Blood and forced a weak grin. ‘You made it.’ He reached out his hand, and Blood shook it firmly. ‘Better late than never, huh?’
‘Late?’ Blood frowned, opening the Merc’s rear door for them. ‘If anyone’s late, you are.’
‘We waited for you to show for hours!’ Kate protested, as she and Tom got gratefully inside.
In truth, they’d been waiting for weeks, since they’d first arrived here in Chicago. It had been Blood who’d informed them he’d heard some big lupine event was being planned in the city. He’d warned them to stay well away – he’d certainly intended to. But Kate and Tom had known that if there was an opportunity here to scupper the lupine community’s quest for power then it had to be taken. And a few days ago, to their relief, Blood had emailed to say he was going to join them after all …
‘Those coded messages of yours are too much.’ Blood scrambled into the driver’s seat. ‘I thought “21 Always Jealous WS” meant nine o’clock on the 21st between Evergreen Street and West Schiller.’
Kate shook her head. ‘Nuh-uh. You got the nine o’clock and Evergreen bit right, but WS stood for Winter Solstice – that’s the 22nd.’
‘Today,’ Tom said pointedly.
‘Well, pardon me I’m sure,’ grumbled Blood as he started the car. ‘Got worried sick when I couldn’t find you last night. Been driving around looking for you pretty much ever since.’
Kate fluttered her eyelids. ‘Nice to know you care.’
‘Didn’t know whether the ’wolves had got you, or the cops,’ said Blood mildly, pulling away down the deserted street. ‘I take it you’re both still wanted for that double homicide in New Orleans?’
Tom nodded and grimaced. ‘You were there. You know we’re innocent.’
‘You’re the only one who can prove it,’ Kate added. The three of them had survived a bloody showdown with Kate’s mother, who’d killed two men, then later blamed it on Kate and Tom, making them dangerous fugitives in the eyes of the world.
‘Who’d believe me if I told them?’ Blood pointed out. ‘I’d just be incriminating myself. Besides, I’m older than you two. They’d blame it all on me for corrupting you, stick me in prison or something.’ His voice suddenly became terribly English and refined. ‘And honestly, can you see me in one of those ghastly orange uniforms?’
Kate smiled. Blood was apt to slip into this voice; in his day job he worked selling upmarket real estate, and found the accent often impressed his customers. ‘Let’s just hope the police don’t stop you now for driving with one headlight out,’ she remarked.
‘We’d better get well away from here,’ said Blood, heading towards the highway. ‘If Tom was seen in ’wolf form, he may have caused a stir. And if the police stop our car looking for witnesses …’
‘Good paranoid thinking,’ Kate said.
‘Thank you.’
Kate stared out of the window, willing herself to relax a little after her ordeal. She was no stranger to paranoia herself – nor to horror. Her whole family were pureblood werewolves, which meant that the lupine gene was in her – just waiting to be activated by mating with a lupine partner. Kate had railed against her lupine destiny. In the end, her parents had taken matters into their own hands: they’d abducted Tom and bitten him, turned him ’wolf, so he could turn her.
Luckily for Kate, things hadn’t turned out as her parents had planned. Tom had been able to resist the lupine toxins. Though he’d succumbed and become ’wolf in the end, he was a wereling – a werewolf who retained enough humanity to temper the savage lupine nature. Together, he and Kate had escaped her family and gone on the run.
I should’ve stayed put, she thought miserably. Should’ve stayed blissfully ignorant. She’d always known the secret lupine community stretched clear across the United States, around the world even. But she’d never imagined that some of the ’wolves, tired of skulking in the shadows, were already plotting the day when they would come out into the light to run wild in the world of humans … nor that her own, unbalanced mother would become one of their ringleaders.
‘Well, whatever the circumstances,’ Tom said from the back seat, his face angled to the hot-air blast of the rear heaters, ‘it’s good to see you, Blood.’
Blood nodded. ‘I was hoping to see you less hairy, Tom. I take it you couldn’t find Big Chief Medicine Man Jicaque, and his patented werewolf cure?’
‘Oh, we found him all right,’ Kate answered, a touch sourly. ‘In New York. And he could’ve healed Tom. He’s healing other lupines there, right now.’
‘So, what went wrong?’ asked Blood.
‘Nothing,’ Tom replied. ‘Except I realised that while we’re still fighting the lupines, my own ’wolf might just come in useful ...’
‘Well, I’m glad you’ve found a use for it,’ Blood said dryly. ‘But I imagine our friend Takapa has a good use for it too – stuffed and mounted on his wall, once he’s taken you apart cell by cell.’
Kate shuddered and turned away at the mention of Takapa’s name. It came from an old Navajo word meaning Eaters of Men. Somewhere out in the city’s darkness, that evil albino freak was up to something. Takapa saw himself as the great saviour of the lupine race – utilising modern science in his quest to lead all werewolves into a glorious new age of freedom.
Freedom to hunt humans without fear of reprisal.
Freedom to kill and feed at will.
Maybe one day, the freedom to rule over all humankind.
It was a sick, twisted, impossible dream – and yet it seemed the ’wolves were beginning to believe it could come true. Takapa was undoubtedly a genius in his own freakish way; his genetic researches were stripping away the mysticism from the lupine condition, and while some ’wolves saw that as sacrilege, Takapa was determined to convince them it was a necessary step if werewolves were to survive in the modern world.
‘We managed to sabotage Takapa’s lupine army in New York,’ Tom said, ‘but so far, we’ve learned sweet nothing about what he’s planning here in Chicago.’ Kate could hear the frustration in his voice.
‘I may be able to shed some light on that,’ said Blood.
Both Kate and Tom sat up straight in their seats.
‘But first I’ll tell you why I decided to join you in your little escapade,’ Blood began. ‘I was hanging out incognito in the Hamptons and was quite enjoying myself – until someone tried to kill me.’ He sighed. ‘By the size of his teeth, he must’ve been sent by your beloved mother, Kate. Perhaps because I am the only person who might be able to clear your names.’
Tom stared. ‘What happened?’
‘Much like you did tonight, I ran like bloody hell.’ Blood shot them a glance in the rear-view. ‘Then, having got my breath back, I decided it might be a little healthier to celebrate the festive season with friends.’
‘And when they didn’t want to know, you looked us up?’ Tom asked dryly.
Blood grinned. ‘Thought I’d take
pity on my favourite urchins. Season of goodwill and all that.’
‘What you’re saying,’ Kate interrupted, ‘is that you’ve woken up to the fact that you’ll never be safe anywhere until we end this whole nightmare for good.’
‘What a ray of sunshine you are, Trolly,’ sighed Blood. ‘Still, if we’re going out, we may as well go out in style. I’ve booked a suite at the Drake Hotel for the festive season. Would you care to join me?’
Kate smiled wryly at Tom. ‘Gee, he really is Santa Claus.’
‘The suite comes with an extra guest room.’ Blood craned his neck around for a moment and winked at them. ‘Twin beds only, I’m afraid.’
Kate’s mouth went suddenly dry. She flushed when she realised Tom had gone as silent as she had.
‘Twins is perfect,’ Tom mumbled.
‘Yeah,’ Kate agreed faintly, resting her hot cheek against the cold glass of the window. Her green eyes gazed back at her from her ghostly reflection in the glass. ‘Perfect.’
Blood took a sharp turn heading for Lake Shore Drive.
As he neared the intersection, Kate saw four men standing in the white glow of a streetlight. Dressed in black leather, they were almost one with the night, but she caught the glint of something shiny on the heavy jackets they wore. A shiver went through her. ‘Slow down,’ she told Blood.
Tom saw them too. ‘Same guys,’ he breathed.
Now Kate noticed each of the men wore a silver wolf’s head pinned on his chest. The men stared back at Tom and Kate. One pulled out a cell phone.
‘OK, let’s get going,’ Tom said. ‘Like, now.’
‘Make up your minds,’ grumbled Blood, as he put his foot down.
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CHAPTER TWO
They cruised through the thin traffic on Lake Shore Drive. The night was so black, Tom found it hard to see where lake ended and sky began; they mingled to form a long rumpled sheet of darkness behind the streetlamps. But as Blood left the highway and headed west into Uptown, the urban sprawl stole back some of the sky. There was still plenty of life around this part of Chicago in the small hours, beneath the twinkling fairy lights strung up above the streets: drunks mooching around the littered sidewalks, stray couples fumbling behind dumpsters, excited groups of young people spilling out of clubs, laughing and swaying, filled with festive cheer.