Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Warren, holding out his hand.

  I had no choice but to shake it. Warren held my hand a little too long.

  “Yeah,” I said. I looked at Owen. “Look, we’ve got work to do. Can we get on with it?”

  Warren grinned, though something flashed in his eyes. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

  “I might have something for you to check on later,” said Owen. “Thanks for all the work on the case. It’s going to make closing it a lot easier – I’ll make sure your name is on it when we do.”

  “Thanks, Colonel,” said Warren. “If you need anything, I’ll be at the Central Office.”

  With that, he disappeared into an elevator further down the hall.

  “There was no reason to be rude,” said Owen. “Professional courtesy…”

  “Yeah, yeah, Homeland Security officers are all brothers in arms, and you all cover each others’ asses when you break the law and frame people,” I said. I reminded myself to be civil. “Look, our boss said I had to work with you, so I’m going to work with you, personally. But she didn’t say anything about every random idiot in a blue uniform. And if we do run into a pack of wraithwolves before this is over, a guy like Warren has no defense against them. They’ll rip him apart. There will be even more blood on this nice carpet.”

  I pointed at the bottom of the door to the Doyles’ condo. The carpet had been stained with dried blood.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Owen. He pulled on a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket. I tied back my hair into a ponytail and donned a ball cap. It had been three days, so the crime lab technicians had already gotten everything useful they were going to get. Still, no sense in messing it up more than necessary.

  Owen undid the Homeland Security seal and opened the door.

  An unpleasant mixture of odors assailed my nose. There was the scent of the various chemicals crime lab techs used – fingerprint powder and blood detector and the like. Overlaid with that was the unpleasant odor of old blood and a hint of bowels. Whoever owned this place was going to face spending a fortune to clean the condo.

  I followed Owen through a small entry hall and into the living room. The place had been luxurious, with a large living room opening into a dining room with a polished wooden floor. Past the kitchen was a hallway leading to bedrooms and an office. Massive dark stains marked the floor, and the furniture had been destroyed by slashing claws. My eyes flicked over the living room, noting details and comparing them with things I had seen in the file. Doyle’s body, most of it, had been found there. His wife on the ruined, bloodstained sofa. The oldest two kids on the floor. The youngest had been found halfway in the living room closet. The boy had been trying to hide from the monsters killing his family, who had then dragged him out of the closet and torn him apart anyway.

  My lips thinned into a hard line. I didn’t like Owen, and I didn’t trust Homeland Security. But I was going to find whoever was responsible for this and make them regret it.

  I glanced at Owen, saw him looking at me.

  “Yeah,” he said, voice quiet. “Bad, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” I said, pulling out my aetherometer again. “Let’s track down whoever did it and make them sorry.”

  Owen didn’t say anything as I turned in a circle, frowning as I watched the aetherometer’s dials spin. I was still picking up the odd echo the instrument had detected earlier, but I still had no idea what it was.

  “Anything?” said Owen.

  “Give me a minute,” I said, scowling at the aetherometer.

  He waited, no trace of impatience on his face. I suppose Homeland Security officers had to be good at waiting.

  “Okay,” I said at last, lowering the aetherometer. “There was definitely a summoned creature in this condo. I’m not sure if the creature was summoned in here or if it was summoned outside the building. But I’m entirely sure the wraithwolf was summoned by a magical device of some kind.”

  “Something the Elves built?” said Owen. “Something like your aetherometer?”

  “Maybe,” I said, tucking the device away in my bag. “I don’t know. I’ve seen machines that can summon wraithwolves.” I remembered the automated summoning circles I had found in Last Judge Mountain, machines that the pre-Conquest US government had developed in the final decades before the Conquest. “It’s possible human technology could do it.”

  “The device isn’t still in the apartment, is it?” said Owen.

  “No,” I said. “Beyond all doubt. It would radiate magic. You’d be able to detect it. You know the spell to sense magic, right?” As if to demonstrate, he cast it and promptly found nothing. “Yeah. It’s not in here. Either someone brought it in here, or Doyle was playing with it and got himself killed, and someone took it, or…”

  I scowled at the door to the hall, an idea coming to me.

  “The camera footage didn’t show anyone coming and going in the hallway during the probable time of death?” I said.

  “No,” said Owen. He consulted his phone. “Some pizza deliverymen arrived during that time, but we can account for their movements. They didn’t go higher than the fourteenth floor.”

  “All the corpses were found in the living room,” I said. “None of the other rooms were really disturbed, were they?”

  “No,” said Owen. He picked up on my line of thought. “You think they came through that window?” He pointed at the big dining room window. “The techs didn’t find any fingerprints but the family’s on the window.”

  “Might not matter,” I said. “Wraithwolves can become mist, right?” Owen nodded at that. “They could have flowed right through the window. Help me get this open, will you?”

  We unlatched the big window and slid it open. A gust of cold November air hit me in the face. The screen rattled, and I noticed that it was torn in the corner like someone had shoved a knife through it.

  Or a claw.

  “Look at that,” said Owen.

  “Like a claw, right?” I said.

  Owen scowled. “How the hell did we miss that?”

  I shrugged. “Twenty-fifth floor, you don’t expect someone to come through the window, yeah? Let me get this screen out, I have an idea.”

  I pulled the screen out, propped it against the wall, and leaned out the window. The street was a long, long way below. I was suddenly very aware of Owen standing behind me. I had a brief vision of him giving me a quick shove out the window. Of course, if he did that, he was screwed. One levitation spell later, I would come back up the window and blast his head off…

  I pushed aside the paranoid thoughts and looked at the metal and glass below the window. From the street, the building had looked entirely built of glass and steel, but that wasn’t right. There were bands of ornamental white stone between each of the floors and windows.

  I saw the bright streaks of claw marks working their way up to the Doyles’ living room window.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “What?” said Owen.

  I pulled my head and shoulders back through the window. “Look down and to the left. Don’t worry, I won’t push you out.”

  He gave me a dubious look but leaned out the window. Owen stared at the side of the building for about thirty seconds and then straightened up with a grunt.

  “It climbed in through the window,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Wraithwolves don’t usually do that. They can turn into mist. So why bother climbing? Give me a hand with the screen.”

  We put the window back together, both of us looking at the buildings across the street. It was a mixture of businesses, smaller condo buildings, and a parking ramp. I could tell our thoughts were running in the same direction.

  “You know,” I said. “I bet at least one of those buildings had a security camera pointed at the sidewalk and the side of this building.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Owen. “Let’s go knock on some doors and request help from the citizenry.”

/>   “Bet they’ll be delighted,” I said.

  ###

  As it turned out, people were cooperative. The various managers and administrators of the buildings across the street, once Owen explained things, were more than happy to let us look through their security footage.

  And at the seventh business, we found something.

  It was a pizza place, and the owner had installed a pair of expensive cameras over his front door. Not because he had been robbed (he explained this at some length), but because his employees had been giving away free pizzas to their friends and he wanted to put a stop to it. The cameras had a good view of the sidewalk outside the restaurant, and also a good angle on the street and the side of the Doyles’ condo building. Even better, his server kept camera footage for the last two months, so it was easy to go back to November 10th and watch the footage from 6 PM to 9 PM.

  Owen sat at the owner’s desk, which occupied a cluttered little office at the back of the restaurant that smelled of garlic and pepperoni grease. I stood behind him, watching the monitor, and the owner alternated between hovering near the door and barking orders to his employees. He didn’t sound like a real pleasant guy to have as a boss. No wonder his workers had been stealing pizzas.

  The blue-toned video flickered and blurred on the screen as Owen fast-forwarded, and then the image froze as he paused it.

  “There,” he said. “What the hell is that?”

  The creature appeared on the video for less than fifteen seconds.

  It ran along the base of the wall, moving faster than a human could. Then it scrambled up the side of the building’s wall, keeping between the windows. I wondered how no one had seen it, but it had been dark, there weren’t that many streetlights on that section of the sidewalk, and all the passing cars would have been unable to see past their lights.

  “Pause it seven seconds back,” I said. “I think we’ll get the clearest image there.”

  Owen complied, and we gazed at the screen in silence for a moment.

  I had never seen a wraithwolf quite like that.

  It had the head of a wraithwolf and bony armor plates that covered its body. It also had a scorpion-like tail tipped with a barbed stinger. Unlike most other wraithwolves that I had encountered, the thing was walking on its hind legs. It would have stood seven or eight feet tall, and it was a solid pillar of muscle. The image was clear enough that I saw that the creature had hands, actual hands with thumbs, though the fingers were tipped with big claws.

  “What the hell is that?” said Owen.

  “Good question,” I said. “It looks like a wraithwolf, but I’ve never seen one that walks on two legs.”

  “Neither have I,” said Owen.

  “Hey,” I said, another thought occurring to me. “Run that forward a couple of seconds. When it starts climbing up the wall.”

  Owen complied and froze the image again. The wraithwolf-thing had started scaling the sheer wall as easily as if it had been a ladder. In the still image, on the wraithwolf’s back, I saw a metal plate among the bony armor. Based on its position, it would have been at the base of the creature’s spine, and I thought that it was about the size of my hand.

  “That looks like…” Owen frowned. “I can’t make it out. But it looks like a metal plate grafted to the creature’s back. We’re going to need a copy of this recording. Maybe some of the lab techs can clean up the image a bit.”

  “Well, go wave your badge at the owner,” I said. “He seems happy enough to help. Maybe you can bully some free pizza out of him, too.”

  Owen only grunted, and then summoned the owner, who as it turned out, was more than happy to allow us access to the video recording. I watched as Owen cautioned the owner against sharing the file with anyone, since it might put his life in danger, and then copied the video clip to his phone and then uploaded it to the case file in UNICORN. I took a copy for myself and stashed it on my phone since I suspected I was going to need it soon.

  “You really want to put the video into the case file?” I said.

  Owen looked surprised. “It’s vital evidence. Vital evidence goes into the case file, along with notes explaining how it was obtained and under what circumstances.”

  I snorted. “What, you’re going to put the wraithwolf on trial when we catch it? Tarlia gave us this job to do it quietly, not to run it through the court system.”

  “And I suppose you’re going to go around murdering people without accountability?” said Owen.

  “Like the wraithwolf?” I said. “See, this isn’t like your usual cases, where you fake enough evidence to get someone on a Punishment Day video. No, we actually have to get results, and if half of Homeland Security sees the footage of the wraithwolf, whoever summoned it might go into hiding.”

  “You think someone in Homeland Security summoned the creature?” said Owen.

  I shrugged. “A lot of former members of the Wizard’s Legion in Homeland Security, aren’t there?”

  “It’s more likely the work of a renegade wizard,” said Owen. “Someone who knows illegal spells that she shouldn’t.”

  We stared at each other. It wasn’t quite a glare, but it was getting there. I rebuked myself for provoking him. I didn’t like Owen Quell, but we had to work together until this was done.

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Your book says we shouldn’t do that, right?” Owen inclined his head. “But I think it’s fair to conclude that somebody summoned up the wraithwolf and sent it after the Doyle family. Ronald Doyle didn’t do it himself.”

  Owen let out a breath. “You’re probably right. It must have been a targeted killing. He pissed someone off, they summoned up that wraithwolf and sent it after him. If the wraithwolf was going to kill at random, it wouldn’t climb up the side of a building to do it. It would have gone on a killing spree until it was stopped.”

  “I know people who might be able to help,” I said, thinking of my husband and the Shadow Hunters. “People who might have encountered a two-legged wraithwolf before.”

  “More illegal wizards?” said Owen, half-seriously.

  “No, they’re perfectly legal,” I said. “Royal charter and everything.”

  “Warren’s got a good run-down on Doyle’s finances in the file,” said Owen. “He has some discrepancies flagged. I’ll start following up on them, see if we can find someone who has an obvious motive.” He glanced at the clock on the office wall. “It’s getting late. Let’s meet back at Central at, say, nine AM tomorrow? We can continue then.”

  “All right,” I said.

  We thanked the owner, exited the restaurant, and stopped on the sidewalk. It had gotten dark, and rush hour was in full swing.

  “You want a ride back to the parking ramp?” said Owen.

  “Nah,” I said. “It’s only a half-mile. The walk will do me some good. Hell, traffic’s so backed-up I’ll probably get there before you do. See you tomorrow.”

  He nodded, and I headed down the street. I waited until I had turned the corner, and I pulled out my phone. It was, what, a seven-hour time difference between the UK and Wisconsin? Riordan might be asleep or busy. Then again, he might not, and I needed some information.

  A two-legged wraithwolf. I’d never seen anything like that. But if anyone knew about the creatures of the Shadowlands, it was the Family of the Shadow Hunters. If there was a dangerous Shadowlands creature loose in Milwaukee, help from the Shadow Hunters might catch the creature before anyone else got killed.

  And it had been an unpleasant day, and I really wanted to talk to my husband.

  I’d start with Riordan.

  I dialed his number and put the phone to my ear as I walked, keeping an eye out for trouble partly out of habit, partly if Owen decided to follow me.

  Riordan picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

  His voice was deep and quiet, with a mild Texas twang, and I felt better at once for hearing it.

  “Hey, it’s Nadia,” I said. “I’m not in trouble
or anything, I just…you know, I just wanted to talk to you. This isn’t a bad time, is it?”

  “No, it’s not,” said Riordan. “In fact, we’re all done here. I should be able to come back to Milwaukee tomorrow.”

  “Really?” I said. My voice went up an octave with excitement, but I was too happy to care.

  “Yeah,” said Riordan. “Our job here is finished,” he wouldn’t discuss the Shadow Hunters openly over the phone, just as I wouldn’t talk about my jobs from Tarlia, “and I was just about to text you my flight information. If you don’t mind picking me up from the airport.”

  “I do not,” I said, stopping at a crosswalk. “I really, really do not.”

  “How are you?” said Riordan.

  I hesitated.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve got a job.”

  “I see,” said Riordan.

  “It’s a bit like the one I had in New York, the one where we both wound up working on the same thing from opposite ends,” I said. The light changed, and I crossed, the headlights of the cars waiting for the signal to change shining in my eyes. “I’m supposed to find something out.”

  “I see,” said Riordan again. “I wish I could get an earlier flight.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, “though I wish you could, too.” I glanced around and made sure no one was close enough to overhear. “Have you ever heard of a wraithwolf with two legs? Like, one that walks on two legs, like a human?”

  “No,” said Riordan. He paused. “Like a werewolf?”

  “For God’s sake,” I said. “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

  “I know that,” said Riordan, his voice dry, “but about a hundred thousand fantasy romance novels think otherwise.”

  I’d asked him once why there were so many novels about vampires and werewolves, creatures that didn’t exist. He’d told me that back before the Conquest, people had written novels about Elves and orcs and dwarves. Except after the Conquest, people found out that Elves and orcs and dwarves actually existed and writing something negative about Elves would get the Inquisition or Homeland Security on your doorstep. So people wrote about vampires and werewolves instead.