“I’m not with Homeland Security,” I said. “I work for someone else.”
“The Inquisition?” said Leon.
“If you like,” I said. No harm in letting Leon think I was a human Inquisition agent. After all, I worked for the High Queen, just like the Inquisition. “Ronald Doyle and his family were killed by a new variety of wraithwolf, and that caught our attention. I want to know what happened. And your life may be in danger, Mr. Leon.” I closed my hand, the fire winking out. “Please, tell me what’s going on. I might be able to help you.”
“I didn’t know,” whispered Leon. “I didn’t know it would end up like this. I thought…I thought it was legitimate. An Elf gave them to us!”
An Elf? Just what the hell was going on here?
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” I said.
Leon glanced at Owen. “He’s not…one of them, is he?”
“Nope,” I said. “He has absolutely no clue at all what’s going on.” Owen sighed. At least Leon hadn’t thought that I was Owen’s daughter. “Please, Mr. Leon. Let us help you. And help us keep anyone from getting killed the way Doyle’s family was killed.”
“Okay.” Leon seemed to pull together the shattered wreckage of his nerves. “Okay. You have to understand. Business…hasn’t been very good the last few years. And my wife has expensive tastes, and costs keep going up. But then the Mage Fall happened, and the Day of Return, and all these companies started getting contracts for reconstruction work on Kalvarion. Ron – ah, Ronald Doyle – Ron told me that we had to find a way to cash on in this. I mean, they’re gonna need concrete and sewers on Kalvarion, right? Ron said he’d ask around. He has some contacts in Athyrvalis – um, that’s a city of Elven commoners out in southwestern Minnesota. Humans aren’t usually allowed in the Elven cities, but Ron had gotten a contract to do some building work there.”
I hoped for Doyle’s sake that none of the buildings he had raised in Athyrvalis had fallen over.
“What happened then?” I said.
“Ron came back with an Elf from Athyrvalis about a month ago,” said Leon. “The Elf wouldn’t tell us his name. He said we could refer to him as Mr. Hood.”
“Mr. Hood,” I said, unable to keep the incredulity from my tone.
“Well, yeah,” said Leon. He waved his hands in front of his face. “He always wore a hood, you know? And he did some kind of magic thing so we could never see his face.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that making a business deal with an anonymous Elf who called himself Mr. Hood might be a bad idea?” I said. I remembered what Riordan had said about Leon being only halfway smart. Maybe greed had overridden the smart half of his brain.
“Well…you know, I didn’t want him to think that I was elfophobic,” said Leon, shifting. “Plus, he was offering us a lot of money, and he had friends in Homeland Security.” He gave Owen an uneasy look. “Some of the same friends that Governor Arnold has, so I figured it was okay.”
“What kind of deal did Mr. Hood want to make with you?” I said.
Leon sucked in a deep breath. “Well…he said that the world was changing, right? Everyone knows that. The Mage Fall happened, and the Archons were destroyed. The High Queen would rule both Earth and Kalvarion. And the Great Gate to Kalvarion is right here in Milwaukee.” A little west of Milwaukee, technically, but now was not the time to quibble. “The High Queen was going to relax some restrictions on technology. I heard how a company out east got a big contract for making robotic tractors. Mr. Hood said the High Queen was going to let human use new kinds of weapons.”
“Weapons?” said Owen. “What kind of weapons?”
“You don’t know?” said Leon. “You’re in Homeland Security. Don’t you know all that top-secret classified shit?”
“It is entirely possible,” said Owen, “that the Homeland Security officers Mr. Hood was in contact with did not have official authorization.”
“Aw, hell,” said Leon. “I should have known that it was too good to be true.”
“What kind of weapons did Mr. Hood offer to sell Homeland Security?” I said.
“It wasn’t so much as a weapon as it was a complete tactical system,” said Leon. “Least that’s what Mr. Hood said. It didn’t look like much.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Like this little metal plate thing, you know? Maybe about the size of a big deck of cards. Mr. Hood said it was part technology, part magic.”
I shared a look with Riordan and Owen. We had seen the metal plates at the base of the wraithwolves’ spines.
“So what does this ‘complete tactical system’ actually do?” I said.
“I dunno,” said Leon. “I’m too old and fat to play with something like that. But if you use it, it’s supposed to make you into some kind of freaking super soldier. Like, faster and stronger than a normal man, all that stuff.” He shrugged. “Ron and I gave all the plates to Homeland Security for testing.”
“Then you’ve never seen them used?” I said.
“Nah,” said Leon.
“Can you tell us anything else about the weapons?” said Owen.
Leon shrugged. “There were a couple dozen of them. Um. Forty-eight in total. Mr. Hood paid us for taking them to Homeland Security, and he said we’d be paid even more if the government decided to start using them. A royalty on every sale, that kind of thing. He said he had gotten them from a company calling itself the Singularity, and…”
“What?” I said.
Leon flinched. My tone must have been harsher than I intended. “Sorry?”
“You said he got them from a group called the Singularity,” I said.
“I think so, yeah, that’s what he said.” Leon hesitated. “A company called the Singularity. You’ve…heard of them?”
Oh, yeah, I had heard of them.
I didn’t know who or what they were. I didn’t know if the Singularity was an organization or a code name for an individual. But I did know they were up to no good. In New York, they had convinced the business manager of the dragon Malthraxivorn to dig up some old Catalyst Corporation technology. From what I had been able to gather, the High Queen had shut down Catalyst when they had started to do insane medical experiments, and one of their experiments had been a guy named Neil Freeman, a half-human, half-cyborg super assassin who had killed Malthraxivorn and had almost killed me and Riordan a couple of times. We’d freed Neil from his enslavement in the end, and now he worked for the High Queen, but it had been a close thing.
“Yup,” I said. “I’ve heard of them. Mr. Hood didn’t mention a group called Catalyst Corporation, did he?”
Leon blinked. “No. Never heard of them.”
“Neither have I,” said Owen.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “They’re big bad news.” I looked back at Leon. “And I think Mr. Leon here has figured that out. Else he wouldn’t be hiding out here in the woods.”
“I think the weapons drove the Homeland Security guys insane,” said Leon. He cast a nervous look around the trees. “When I talked to them…it’s like they were on drugs, you know? Like they confiscated a bunch of synthetic cocaine from a guy with a protein printer and snorted it all at once. It was like talking to crazy people. They’d say how the city of Milwaukee was corrupt, how the state of Wisconsin was corrupt, and it was up to them to clean things up.” He took a deep breath. “When I heard what happened to Doyle and his wife and his kids…Jesus. I knew they’d gone off the deep end.”
“Are you seriously accusing Homeland Security officers of mass murder?” said Owen.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” said Leon. “I know they did it. They kept talking about how Ron and I were corrupt, how Governor Arnold was the biggest crook in Wisconsin, and one day we’d get what was coming to us. Which was a load of crap, because I know Homeland Security does favors for Governor Arnold when he asks. But I didn’t say anything because Mr. Hood was paying us a lot, but when I heard that Ron had been killed, I knew they’d done it.” He shru
gged. “I figured I’d hide out here. Eventually, the Homeland Security officers would screw up enough that they’d get caught and killed, and that would be that.”
That was a pretty cowardly way to deal with the problem. Logical, though.
“You realize,” said Owen, “that we’re going to need the names of these officers. If they have been committing murders, they’ve betrayed everything their badge stands for.” I bit back the sarcastic remark that came to mind. Wouldn’t have been helpful just now.
“Am I going to be in trouble?” said Leon.
“You’re not going to get murdered if you tell us the name of those officers,” I said.
“That’s a good argument,” said Leon.
“I’m not going to lie, I think you’re kind of a dumbass, but since you’re hiding out in the woods because of a business deal, you’ve probably already figured that out,” I said. Leon scowled, then shrugged to concede the point. “But if you cooperate with us, I think you should be fine. But the next time someone tries to sell you mysterious forbidden technology, call the Inquisition. Even if it makes you feel elfophobic.”
“Okay,” said Leon. “I just want it on the record that my cooperation is voluntary and freely given.”
“Got it,” I said. “So, the names of those officers?”
Leon took a deep breath. “You have to understand, I only talked to two of them. Lieutenant Kyle Warren and Sergeant Philip Hopkins.”
There was silence for a moment. Owen’s face had become a mask of stone. I remembered Lieutenant Kyle Warren standing outside of Doyle’s condo, how I had disliked him on sight for some reason.
“Oh,” I said. “Shit.”
“Is…is that bad?” said Leon.
“Yeah, but not for you,” I said.
“We need to get back to the Central Office right now,” said Owen. “Warren is the second in command of the homicide division. Hopkins is one of the senior sergeants for the patrol and traffic officers.” I remembered the older Homeland Security officer who had hassled Jacob Bowyer at the Moran Imports warehouse. “If those bronze plates are wraithwolf summoning devices and Warren and Hopkins have been giving them out…God, I don’t want to…”
“Wraithwolves?” said Leon, his voice going up half an octave. “Wraithwolves? Mr. Hood didn’t say anything about any damned wraithwolves!”
“Quiet,” said Riordan. “All of you.”
His voice was calm, but it cut through the talk like a knife. My husband had turned and was looking towards the woods. He had produced a handgun from beneath his coat.
“Someone’s approaching on foot,” said Riordan.
I didn’t hear anything, but I didn’t have Shadowmorph-enhanced senses.
“Oh, God,” said Leon. “Oh, God. They’re coming for me.”
About a minute later, four men and one woman appeared on the gravel driveway leading to the county highway.
All five of them wore the blue uniforms of Homeland Security officers, and at their head walked a middle-aged man I recognized from the confrontation at my brother’s warehouse.
The five officers walked towards the house and froze when they saw us.
There was a long silence.
“Ah, hell, Colonel,” said Sergeant Hopkins at last, running a hand through his close-cut gray hair. “I always thought you were a good officer. I didn’t want you mixed up in this.”
***
Chapter 12: Men & Wolves
Owen looked at the five officers, his heart turning to ice within his chest.
He knew them. He knew them all, had spoken with them, and worked with them on various cases. Sergeant Hopkins was a respected veteran of the force, trusted by both the officers and the rank-and-file. The other three men were younger, had only a few years under their belts. The woman was named Cecilia Sullivan and was in her thirties, in charge of prisoner handling, and had always done an exemplary job. Owen would have said that all of them were good officers.
But now…
Now there was something wrong with them, something off.
There was something wild and feral in their eyes. Owen felt like he was confronting a pack of rabid dogs, not speaking with fellow Homeland Security officers. For that matter, their movements were different. Cecilia Sullivan had been a quiet, mousy woman, though hard enough when the situation called for it. Now there was a strange grace in her movements, and that feral, hungry expression was out of place on her features.
His right hand drifted towards his sidearm, and his mind called magic for a spell. Nadia moved to the left, Riordan to the right, his gun pointed at the five officers. Leon shied behind them, trying not to whimper.
“Stay behind us,” murmured Riordan. Leon was happy to comply.
“Phil,” said Owen. “What the hell is going on?”
“Look, it’s her,” said Cecilia, pointing at Nadia. “The bitch with the fruit company.” Nadia snorted, once. “Kirby said that she was corrupt, that she was one of that fat toad Brauner’s flunkies. We’re going to have to kill her too. Let me kill her, let me be the one to…”
“Quiet,” snapped Hopkins. Cecilia stepped back and flinched, lowering her gaze. There was something peculiarly dog-like about the movement.
“Phil,” said Owen again. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Making an arrest,” said Hopkins. “We have reason to believe that Pablo Leon murdered Ronald Doyle, and…”
“Don’t bullshit me,” said Owen. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s not good, and I know that Pablo Leon didn’t kill Ronald Doyle and his family.” His hand moved closer to his gun. “I’m going to ask you for the last time. What are you doing here?”
Hopkins stared at him and then nodded. “All right. You’re a good officer, sir, and I’ve always respected you. I’ll tell you the truth.” He pointed at the house. “We’re going to kill him the way we killed Doyle.”
Leon let out another whimper.
“Why?” said Owen, his heart sinking. God, five officers had gone bad. How many more? “What did he do?”
“What didn’t he do!” snapped one of the younger men. “He’s corrupt. They’re all corrupt!”
“Quiet,” said Hopkins. The younger man made that dog-like gesture of submission. “You know as well as I do that Pablo Leon’s corrupt, Colonel. He’s part of Brauner’s organization, and Brauner is a blight on the state of Wisconsin. He’s corrupt, all his associates are corrupt, and they need to be destroyed.”
“Then bring charges,” said Owen. “Build evidence. Gather a case against him. We are not animals…”
One of the younger officers let out a dark laugh.
“But you’re just murdering people on suspicion,” said Owen.
“The law,” said Hopkins. “People like Leon and Doyle and Brauner twist the law and hide behind it to escape punishment for their crimes. Well, that day is over. I’m only going to ask you once, Colonel. Go back out to your car and go home. Forget all about this before it’s too late.”
“No,” said Owen, “we…”
“Hey, Hopkins!” said Nadia. “I need to say something.”
Hopkins looked at her. Cecilia glared.
“Yes?” said Hopkins.
“You are absolutely full of shit,” said Nadia.
Hopkins’ lip pulled back from his teeth in a snarl.
“You talk a big game about corruption, but you and your buddy Kirby were the ones Brauner sent to hassle my business, and I bet one of you slashed the tires on our trucks,” said Nadia. “But, hey, that’s just playing hardball. But if Doyle’s all corrupt…why did one of you murder his kids?”
They didn’t answer for a moment.
“They were corrupt, too,” said Hopkins, but his voice was strained. “They benefited from their father’s crimes…”
“The youngest kid was six,” said Nadia. “Six years old, asshole. Bet whichever one of you killed him felt like a real big hero when you did it.”
“I know what happened,�
�� said Riordan. The gun was steady as a rock in his hands. “You summoned the wraithwolves, but your link with the creatures is warping your mind. Their bloodlust is seeping into your thoughts. That’s why you killed Doyle’s wife and children. You couldn’t stop yourselves…”
“Enough!” said Cecilia, her voice rising to a shriek. She glared at Hopkins. “Let us take them the way that Warren took Doyle.”
Warren had killed the Doyle family? Christ. Owen felt the ice in his hart grow harder.
“Then you admit to summoning Shadowlands creatures for the purposes of murder?” said Riordan.
“Summoning?” sneered Cecilia. “You think that’s what we’re doing? Summoning wraithwolves? I suppose we are, in a way. Sergeant, let’s kill them all. We have to rip out the corruption from the world. Let’s start with them.”
“That will be difficult,” said Owen, drawing his pistol and leveling it at the five officers, “given that we have two guns already pointed at you.”
“You don’t understand, Colonel,” said Hopkins. “Guns can’t hurt us, not anymore.”
He started forward.
“Take one more step,” said Riordan, “and I will shoot you.”
Hopkins grinned and took the step.
Riordan’s weapon flashed, the crack of the discharge loud in the clearing. Hopkins grunted, cursed, and went to one knee. A crimson stain spread across the dark blue of his right uniform trouser leg.
“Ah, that hurt,” said Hopkins.
He grunted and stood back up.
“What the hell?” said Owen.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” said Hopkins, and he nodded to Cecilia. “Show them the truth.”
Gray light flashed around them.
And as the light brightened, Hopkins, Cecilia, and the three younger officers changed.
Their bodies grew and swelled, each of them becoming taller. Fur sprouted from their limbs, their uniforms disappearing as they grew. Their heads crackled and lengthened, fangs sprouting from their jaws and claws erupting from their fingers. Fresh muscle rippled beneath their fur, and a sudden stench of rotting flesh and oily musk hit Owen’s nostrils.
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