Bad Blood

by L. A. Banks

The guys got down on their hands and knees and started sorting parts again.

  “Anybody else want another beer?” she called out, heading back toward the kitchen.

  “Make it three,” Woods called out behind her.

  “Roger that,” Fisher said, swearing as a small nut rolled under the couch.

  “Goddamn it, Fisher!” Rod boomed. Everyone froze. “That’s why we can’t put this fucking thing together!”

  Rod was on his feet in an instant. He’d leaped back from a crouched position to a full upright stand so quickly that Sasha gaped with the refrigerator door still wide open. No one spoke; all eyes were on Butler as rage consumed him. “If you keep throwing parts under furniture, then how the hell do you expect the parts to match what’s on the instruction sheets?”

  Horrified, Sasha watched Rod flip her sofa over with a crashing bang to fetch the lost nut. Eerie silence filled the apartment; the blaring music was merely background noise that now seemed so very far away.

  “Rod,” Sasha said as calmly as she could, easing closer to him. “When’s the last time you took your meds?” Her heart was slamming inside her chest. She wiped her moist palms on her back jeans pockets. Her sidearm was in the bedroom; her soul wasn’t prepared for war in her own home. Her mind shrieked a prayer: let the meds work.

  “I don’t need to take my fucking meds; I need to put this goddamned wall unit together!” Rod shouted, high color now staining his ruddy cheeks.

  “I have a supply in the fridge,” she said in a flat statement of fact, coming to Rod slowly as Woods and Fisher slowly backed away from him. “We all have to take our meds. We’ve all been infected. It’s policy.”

  “Forget about the bet, dude,” Fisher said nervously. “It’s cool.”

  “No, it’s not cool!” Rod shouted, now beginning to pace. Sweat had begun to form on his brow. “We made a bet, now let’s do the bullshit. Somebody open a fucking window, would ya? And to hell with a virus! I don’t need meds. I’m all right.”

  Sasha swept up her goldfish bowl before Fred the fish became a casualty when Rod punched the wall near him. Two seconds too late and poor Fred would have been collateral damage.

  “Open a window, Woods,” Sasha said quickly, instructing the paralyzed lieutenant. Her nerves were drawn so taut that she moved in jerky, robotic strides for a few seconds.

  As Rod rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes, her muscles remembered how to move and they propelled her forward to race toward the kitchen where she set Fred’s bowl down on the counter hard, sloshing some of his water out of it. Trying to steady her hands, she retrieved a black medical case that had prefilled hypodermic needles in it. One eye was on the needle that she held up to the light and tapped to be sure no air bubbles were in it before she expressed some of the needle’s contents into the sink, the other eye was on Woods standing dangerously close to an open window and near a man in potential transformation crisis.

  Rod’s olive T-shirt now had a dark V of perspiration, making it cling to the hard ridge of his back, and he held on to either side of the window frame, breathing in deeply, his eyes closed, his face bathed by moonlight.

  “I’m sorry, Fish,” Rod said after a moment. “You know how I hate for anything to beat me—so I owe you fifty bucks.”

  “Like I said, it’s cool, dude,” Fisher replied quietly, his eyes pained. His expression told them that he knew the last thing Rod was talking about was allowing the Ikea furniture challenge to beat him. It was the thing that they all secretly carried in their veins. The thing that bound them as a small family and made them The Wolf Pack— the virus they shared.

  Sasha went to their commanding officer, their brother, the one they all looked up to, and allowed her fingers to play against Rod’s elbow, warning him before she swabbed the inside of his arm with a cold, alcohol-soaked cotton ball and then quickly stabbed him with the needle. In his frame of mind he could flip into a rage, but instead he stared at her with a mixture of shame, personally directed anger, futility, and that thing they didn’t speak of. She knew it had to be the moon; there was no other explanation that her mind would accept right now.

  “It’s never been this bad before,” he admitted quietly. “Sorry about the couch . . . and the wall.”

  She looked down at his arm and covered the tip of the needle with cotton before extracting it, and then made him bend his arm. “It’s all right. No harm, no foul.”

  The look again . . . It hung between them like a heavy, thick blanket.

  “Moratorium on beer for one hour,” Woods said, trying to find a better place to set the blame. No one wanted to talk about the virus or their own human mortality. “We’ll master this, not to worry, Trudeau. Hey, how many werewolves does it take to screw in a wall-unit shelf anyway?”

  “The moon fucks me up lately . . . even when it’s just waxing toward full,” Rod said, shame singeing his voice as he stalked away from her toward the abandoned furniture.

  Only then, once Rod Butler was farther away from her, could she breathe.

  CHAPTER 1

  North Korea . . . four months later

  HARD, COLD GROUND bit into Sasha’s torso as she lay on the ridge watching. Dirt and frost clung to her fatigues. Black grease covered her normally café au lait skin and her wavy black hair was pulled back in a severe knot secured with a rubber band.

  Panting heavily, she could see her breath in the blue-black night. Adrenaline caused the hairs to stand up on her forearms and bristle at the nape of her neck. Thirty years ago the Colombian Disasters had hit, bringing human awareness to the fact that the supernatural was real.

  Carnage in the rural mountainsides and then fanning out to Panama while spilling blood throughout the Amazon basin, human bodies dismembered everywhere, was not something that could happen on the streets of Chicago or New York, or anywhere else ever again for that matter. They called it drug wars and said cartels in the region had gone wild. That was so that the average human being could sleep at night.

  She never got that part, why one type of monster was supposedly worse than another, but that was people for you. Admittedly, her sensibilities weren’t that refined; if wrong was being done and the brass gave the order, she had no problem taking out a target. Human wrongdoing versus supernatural wrongdoing was like splitting hairs, in her mind. Thank God human technology had reached the point where they could finally codify the myths and legends and track some of what ancient cultures had tried to tell generations long ago. Tonight, however, the mission was crystal clear: blow the sucker.

  Anticipation coiled nervous energy within her, producing a natural high. If she hadn’t been infected by the werewolf virus, she might never have signed on to this insane job—and then would have missed the adventure of a lifetime.

  A thin sheen of sweat coated her body and the tip of her tongue darted out to swipe at the salty substance on her upper lip. All five feet seven inches of her being was on fire. The urge to hunt made the muscles in her arms and legs tense until she almost cried out from the sudden pain—but didn’t. Years of military training within the new Special Forces unit culled out of the Marine Corps’s best kept her on point, on mission, focused. But there was nothing like bringing all that training to live action. This was what she and her squad lived for. This was the moment.

  She lowered her night-vision goggles, no longer needing them now that the moon was full. Something powerful within her practically gnawed at her insides as she waited. She hadn’t even been born twenty-five years ago when the government had learned that the paranormal was real, that things really did slither over the edges of other dimensions into our world. Ironic that her job was to beat it back to where it came from, and as a soldier, to make sure no one helped it to get out. Right now, a national adversary was trying to break a code, trying to genetically create a living weapon. Not tonight. Think again.

  Narrowing her gaze, she studied the slowly moving convoy. Crazy SOBs had actually captured a live werewolf— she could smell the silve
r containment on the wind. Had to be lining the heavily armored truck in the center of the convoy. That part wasn’t rocket science; the military truck lurched and pitched and a furious howl echoed through the valley, shredding her concentration.

  Sasha licked her lips. It had been twelve hours since she’d taken her medication. Vampires were big on sleight of hand, and while gathering intelligence, vamps would swipe anything that fascinated them. Apparently her meds had intrigued Geoff. Unfortunately the shots were also a necessary evil to keep the werewolf virus from flaring in her system. But it was something her pack was used to by now. They had all contracted the virus due to a werewolf bite or scratch. Each had been found, gathered from hospital reports or police records of survivors, and brought in to be studied like lab rats.

  From everything they had seen, natural-born werewolves were pure, cunning, feral, dangerous animals. They looked like wolves—on steroids—tended to be all black, and stood upright. It was their only form. They were wickedly smart and knew how to keep themselves hidden. They were also strong, fast, and tended to crave flesh.

  So her small group were the lucky ones. They got the medicine. They didn’t Turn.

  Incessant howling from the convoy made her throat tighten as she fought not to respond to the call of the wild. Since North Korea didn’t have wolves, per se, even though Asia, North America, and Northern Europe did, answering in kind would not have been a good idea.

  She raked her fingers through her hair waiting for the right moment to detonate the network of explosives. Damn the moon, damn the conservative mission to just send a warning message. Rod’s previous efforts in-country might have gotten a dictator’s hollow apology and media photo op, but why not send a bold message that was beyond crystal clear: start some supernatural shit, we’ll finish it.

  In her mind, they had to. Rod Butler was right—it might have been a layman’s logic, but it sounded right and made too much sense over a few beers out of earshot of the brass: werewolf DNA was the only DNA, thus far, that the scientists thought was capable of being fused with human DNA. The objective: to create the perfect killing machine with as much insane strength as the enemy. Humans needed to genetically evolve to fight the entities made known to man: werewolves and vampires; we could not be the weakest of those species. Made sense. She was all for it, and all about making sure that the technology didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Once the werewolf virus took hold, it mutated, literally ate its way up the DNA chain until the victim of the bite or scratch flipped out and Turned. That’s what had to be controlled.

  Delta One, Operation Dog Star, was about containment. They kept the technology to fuse werewolf DNA with human DNA off the black market. Her squad, small, already infected, and lethal, also had to basically police the humans interested in creating more like them.

  Unlike vampires, ghosts, and other demon strains, the military had thus far learned that the human body was still alive when it morphed into a werewolf. Those dead entities like the run-of-the-mill vampire were not as easy to control as the living. So of all the supernatural creatures, he who managed to harness the wildness of the wolf and make it a strength within the human body would own the fiercest soldier battalions on the planet.

  It was no secret that living things had an innate sense of being alive and feared the void of death, even the wildest of creatures did. What true threat could one hold over the head of something that had already been to hell? That’s why vampires and demons were a crap shoot. But wolf DNA, with pack rules and familial bonds at its sub-core, was an entirely different ball game. If they could separate out the insane monster qualities of that entity and take all the positive traits, then they’d cracked the soldier-making code. It was a genetic engineering race that made the space race look like doddering old ladies in go-carts by comparison.

  A man had to come up with that. Oh, yeah, her job was to blow the mother up to keep that from happening. The mission was simple: take out the cargo vehicle in the convoy to ensure that North Korea never got a live werewolf specimen to their labs. They could not be allowed to get sample DNA.

  Sasha stood, melting into the night. Speed, ridges, rocks, the darkness under a disc of silver all became one. Thin mountain air cut at the dampness that enveloped her skin and caressed her scalp as she ran toward the target breakpoint. Scaling the bridge from beneath and out of view of the approaching convoy, she strategically added more C-4 bricks and then broke away from the behemoth structure, heading back to her original location at the hold point. As she reached the top of the ridge she turned slowly and dialed the cell phone number, listening to each tone calmly before she pushed send.

  The blast created a concussion of sound and vibration that knocked her off her feet. Hurling dirt and debris nearly eclipsed the bright pulse of light that flashed as the bridge fractured. Sasha lifted her head to witness the last armored vehicle plummet into the waiting ravine.

  She stood calmly, threw her head back, and howled.

  A bar in South Korea . . .

  AN HOUR AND a half before true sunrise Sasha knew it would be tough to find her vamp contact, but the SOB had hot-fingered her meds and she was definitely going back for those. Problem was, it had taken her way too long to get across the border. That was a little unanticipated snag, yet she’d managed.

  She allowed her gaze to travel past tables laden with empty glasses and patrons in near stupors who were focused on their lap dances. She briefly wondered if they knew what the gyrating women looked like or even cared at this point, pretty sure that they didn’t.

  Humidity was making her stolen tank top and jeans stick to her body, but that was better than waltzing into the joint looking like she’d just blown a hole in a mountainside. At least she’d been able to hit a public restroom and wash the grit and dirt off her face, albeit some of the mission crud was still under her fingernails. Dirty or not, this wasn’t a tourist-attraction watering hole where a single female could simply enter and sit at the bar without a hassle. No. She was sure her contact used this as a rendezvous point just to yank her chain.

  Every female in the establishment was clearly for sale, half of them on poles, the other half on laps—not that she cared, she just didn’t want a case of mistaken identity to cause some poor bastard to get his lights punched out. In fact, the more she glanced around and received appreciative grins the more she knew that her somewhat dubious condition might inspire some jerk who was half in the bag to think that she really needed money.

  Sasha sighed and blew a stray wisp of hair up off her forehead. If some horny old fart put his hands on her, she’d have to hurt him. Personal restraint just wasn’t in her at the moment. Rather than kill a drunk civilian, she hoisted her pilfered sling purse over her shoulder higher, then ordered a Scotch and water, and waited. It would have been so much easier to just pack the Glock in her waistband and tote the handheld Uzi in a death grip, but why raise unwarranted suspicion. She swallowed the bitter edge of cynicism with her drink when it came, ignoring three more that were sent along with winks and business cards.

  Nervous energy made her roll the short rocks glass between her palms. It had taken her a full year to get her first vampire contact, and they could say what they liked, all the training in the world never prepared one for the up-close and personal contingencies that happened in the field. She glanced around the bar again—and this was one helluva sleazy field. Mud and bugs under the full moon were somehow much more appealing.

  “So we finally meet again,” a warm, ebullient voice crooned close to her ear.

  As irritated as she was, a half smile of amusement still lifted her right cheek. She took a sip of her drink, oddly enjoying the games vampires played.

  “You stole my medicine,” she remarked coolly, not giving her contact the courtesy of meeting his gaze.

  “Just an insurance policy.”

  He moved beside her and sat down with such fluid grace that she strained not to look at him yet. Reflex made her glance up at the mirror behind the bar
shelves and she immediately heard his soft, smug chuckle. Of course he wouldn’t be there, but he was now aware just how hard she’d been trying to avoid his jewel-blue eyes. Damn.

  “Insurance,” Sasha said flatly, turning to now look at Geoff full on. “That’s a slap in the face . . . you’re saying I’m not a woman of my word.”

  “Never such an inference, my darling. A woman of intrigue, yes. Dishonest . . . hmmm . . . I don’t think so.”

  “Good.” Sasha sipped her drink.

  He offered her a perfect, dashing smile that revealed just the slightest hint of fangs. “I made good on my end of the bargain.” He appraised her slowly, taking in her slightly dirty condition. “And I take it you found your target.”

  Sasha raised her glass, said nothing, and then took a sip of Scotch. That was her answer, a blasé bar salute.

  “Excellent,” her contact crooned. “We’re not so different, you and I,” he added in a silky murmur, leaning closer to her. “I have, as I told you, people who are always very concerned about events that could shift world financial markets. Knowing about these unfortunate incidents in advance helps my superiors to, how shall we say, hedge against investment losses by tactfully and discreetly moving them to safe havens before your human military blows things up.”

  He eyed her profile and inclined his head closer to her neck. “I think we make a perfect match, don’t you? I have insight about where these beasts roam, you know where your government is going to lob a preemptive strike—I move my clients’ investments; you blow a bridge, and no one but the raging beasts suffer.”

  She gave him a tight, sarcastic smile. “A match made in heaven. Insider trading on the supernatural Dow Jones.”

  He chuckled softly and arched a sexy eyebrow. “Isn’t everything about what’s on the inside, Sasha? Human power bases are secured the same way.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and everybody from local cops to the CIA had moles, but having one with fangs was new, even for the military.