Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Especially since the denizens of the Shadowlands liked to eat humans. A lot.

  But there was one potential advantage. Locations tended to cluster together, and it was (theoretically) easier to travel within a city or a specific geographic area than from one side of the globe to another.

  In theory.

  I forced magical power through the key, seeking for a congruence nearby. I felt my will tugging at the key…

  “There!” I said, looking to the left. I saw more obsidian boulders and glowing trees. “It’s not far. We lucked out. About…um, three hundred yards.”

  “I’ll get Quell,” said Riordan. “Hold the spell.”

  I nodded, and he ran back into the rift way. About fifteen seconds later he returned with Owen.

  “Damn it,” said Owen as I closed the gate behind him. We were committed now. “Never wanted to come back here.”

  “You and me both, buddy,” I said. “Now stop talking and run!”

  I had to take the lead since I had the key. I sprinted over the uneven ground, running around the obsidian boulders and the glowing trees. The ground climbed in a shallow rise, and on the other side of the hill, the tugging of the key got stronger.

  “All right, it’s here,” I said, gripping the key. “I’m going to get the rift way open.”

  “Hurry,” said Owen

  I wanted to snap back that I was moving as fast as I could, but he was frightened for his family, so I kept my mouth shut. Also, I needed my full concentration to cast the spell.

  A gray curtain of mist rolled up from the ground, and the gate started to open.

  “Nadia!” said Riordan.

  I saw anthrophages running down the hill towards us.

  A lot of anthrophages.

  I said a very bad word and threw my full strength and power into the rift way.

  It tore all the way open.

  “Go!” I said.

  Owen sprang through the rift way. Riordan grabbed my arm and all but pulled me off my feet after him. I looked over my shoulder and saw the anthrophages behind me.

  Like, right behind me. I could have reached out and patted the nearest one on the head.

  Then I was on a lawn in front of a row of houses. At once, I withdrew the power holding the rift way, and it snapped shut. An anthrophage tried to spring after me, but the creature timed it wrong. Its head, shoulders, and arms got through the rift way, and then the gate closed.

  The head, shoulders, and arms landed on the grass at my feet, and the rest stayed in the Shadowlands.

  Made a bit of mess, let me tell you.

  “Did it work?” I said. “Are we here?”

  We were standing on the grassy median between the street and the sidewalk. Good-sized houses rose over the street. We were in Milwaukee somewhere, one of the upper-middle-class neighborhoods, but I didn’t know exactly where.

  But I did see the two Homeland Security SUVs pulled up to the curb, their lights flashing, their doors open and their interiors empty. They were in front of a house whose front door had been ripped open and lay in splinters on the porch…

  “Goddamn it,” said Owen.

  To judge from his reaction, we had found the right place.

  He started forward.

  “Wait!” I grabbed his arm. “Aurasight. We can see if there are wraithwolves in your house.”

  “You know the spell?” he said.

  “Yeah, sort of dug it out of your head during our little spat,” I said, working the spell. He did the same.

  I didn’t add that we could use the aurasight spell to see if his family was still alive or not.

  The aurasight flared to life before my eyes. I saw Riordan’s grim, icy determination and the tight hunger of his Shadowmorph, saw the dread flooding through Owen beneath his stoic façade.

  I also saw the twisted, warped aura of eight or nine wraithwolves in the house.

  For a sickening moment, I thought we were too late, but then I saw another cluster of emotional auras. A woman, I thought, and four girls. Their auras were thick with naked terror, though I saw a growing resignation in the woman’s aura.

  She thought they were all going to die.

  Well, to hell with that.

  “Thank God, they’re still alive,” said Owen. “They’re in the panic room in the basement.”

  “That going to keep the wraithwolves out?” said Riordan.

  “Not for long,” said Owen. “Doors and walls are concrete reinforced steel, but the ceiling’s weaker. If the wraithwolves figure that out…” He looked at me. “Can you take nine wraithwolves at once?”

  “Yeah, probably,” I said, an idea coming to me, “but I think we need to take one alive so we can figure out where to find the rest of these assholes. You ever hear of the Seal of Shadows?”

  Owen frowned. “It blocks summoning spells.”

  “More or less,” I said. “But Shadowlands creatures can’t enter the Seal of Shadows, and if you drop it on them, you can banish them back to the Shadowlands.”

  “What happens if you cast the Seal over Shadowlands creatures bound within human flesh?” said Owen.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Bet it’s going to hurt, though.”

  “All right,” said Owen. “But if it doesn’t work, we have to kill them all.”

  “Yup,” I said. “How many entrances to the basement?”

  “Main stairs through the kitchen,” said Owen. “Then storm doors in the back yard.”

  “They’ll hear us coming through the house,” said Riordan.

  “Then let’s go through the back,” I said.

  We ran up the driveway and around the house. I heard rasping noises coming from the basement windows, the sound of talons against concrete. I glimpsed an elderly woman watching us from behind the fence next door but ignored her as we came to the back yard. As Owen had said, there were a pair of storm doors on the ground at the base of the house.

  “Sorry about your storm doors,” I said, and I hit them with a push of telekinetic force. The doors ripped off their hinges and clattered down the concrete stairs, and I ran after them, Riordan on my right, Quell on my left. Power surged through me as I drew together magic for my next spell.

  Owen had a nice basement. A polished concrete floor gleamed under harsh LED lights, and he had a gym set up in the corner and a laundry area on the far wall. The panic room had been built in the corner, and it looked like a walk-in freezer, albeit one built out of cinder blocks.

  The steel door and the concrete walls were covered with scratch marks.

  Nine two-legged wraithwolves crowded before the panic room door, all of them glaring at us. I caught glimpses of the lights reflecting on the metal plates at the base of their spines.

  “Hi guys!” I said. “Guess what? This is gonna suck!”

  The wraithwolves started to spring forward, and I cast the Seal of Shadows.

  The symbol covered the basement floor, a ring fashioned of blue-white light and filled with the Elven hieroglyph for banishment. I wasn’t entirely sure what it would do to the weird hybrid creatures that the Homeland Security officers had become.

  It worked better than I hoped.

  The wraithwolves froze in place, pinned by the spell, and they started screaming and thrashing, their talons rasping against the floor. Their fur and flesh shriveled, as if they were on fire, albeit in invisible flames. Sparks burst from some of the metal plates affixed to the base of their spines, and some of the wraithwolves fell and stopped moving, shrinking back into human form as they died. Some of them kept moving forward.

  Riordan and Owen killed them. Owen hurled bolts of magical lightning, sweat pouring down his face from the exertion, and Riordan flung lightning globes and slashed with his Shadowmorph blade. In less than a minute, eight of the nine wraithwolves were down, shrinking back into human form.

  One of the wraithwolves staggered and leaped up the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Don’t let that one get away!” I said. “We need to ta
ke one alive!”

  I ran up the stairs after the creature, holding magical power ready to strike. The wraithwolf staggered through the kitchen and slammed into the door, stumbling into the backyard. Riordan and I raced after it. We ran into the backyard as the wraithwolf loped into the driveway. The creature whirled to face us, its wounds healing, and it snarled.

  I drew power for another spell, ignoring the growing fatigue in my mind, and prepared to strike.

  There was a boom and a flash from the fence. The wraithwolf stumbled forward, starting to turn. Behind the fence, I saw the old woman, but she was holding a shotgun, and she raised the weapon and unloaded the second barrel into the wraithwolf. The weapon did nothing to the wraithwolf, but the kinetic energy of pellets staggered the creature.

  My lightning globe struck the wraithwolf and stunned it. The creature fell, thrashing and snarling, and Riordan darted forward and ripped the plate off its back. The wraithwolf howled and shrank back into the shape of an athletic young man with close-cropped hair.

  “Well,” I said. “Officer Kirby. We meet again.”

  He snarled and started to reach for his sidearm.

  I hit him with another lightning globe, and he went back down. Riordan stooped, relieved Kirby of his belt and gun, and used the belt to tie him up.

  I let out a long breath and looked to see the old woman with the shotgun watching me.

  “Hey,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The old woman gave a cautious nod. “Who are you, young lady?”

  “My name’s Nadia,” I said. “This is my husband Riordan. This asshole,” the old lady’s lips thinned at the profanity, “used illegal magic to turn himself into a wraithwolf and tried to kill Colonel Quell’s family. We disagreed violently.”

  “Are Anna and the girls okay?” said the old woman.

  “Yeah, they’re fine, we got here in time,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Mrs. Cornelia Fischer,” said the old woman. I glanced back and saw Owen jog up the storm door stairs. “The Quells are my neighbors. I’ve never seen a human woman use magic.”

  “I’m special,” I said.

  Cornelia frowned as Owen joined us. “What is your opinion of our sovereign the High Queen?”

  That was her polite way of finding out if I was a Rebel or some sort of other subversive.

  “Frankly, she scares the shit out of me,” I said.

  Cornelia frowned. “That seems…appropriately respectful. If uncouth.”

  “Your family?” said Riordan.

  “Unhurt,” said Owen. His voice was calm, but his eyes were flat and hard. “Scared to death, but unhurt. I told Anna to stay in the panic room for now.” He rubbed his jaw. “Don’t know if more of these wraithwolves are going to show up.”

  “Nine of them here, five more at Leon’s farm,” I said. “If Leon was telling the truth, there could be thirty-four more wraithwolves out there.”

  “Thirty-four,” said Owen. “And if they’ve infiltrated Homeland Security…we can’t trust anyone in the department.” I could tell that the admission pained him. “Any one of them could be a wraithwolf.”

  “It’s not as bad as that,” I said. “Now that I know what to look for, I can spot the wraithwolves pretty quickly.” I grimaced. “Of course, my aetherometer is still in your car back in Sussex.”

  “Yes,” said Owen. He took a deep breath. “Thank you for my family’s life, Nadia. If you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t gotten us here in time…this would have ended differently.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable with the praise, and shrugged. “I did what I had to do. Just glad we got here before it was too late.”

  “What is going on?” said Cornelia, looking back and forth between us.

  “Bad business,” said Owen. “I think you’d better go back inside and stay out of sight.”

  Cornelia scowled. “I have a right to know.”

  “Okay, fine, you asked for it,” I said. I didn’t want to deal with an inquisitive neighbor. I sent an effort of will into my blood ring, and it projected a translucent image of the High Queen’s seal, an elaborate thing with a lot of crowned lions and roses and Elven hieroglyphs. “I’m a royal herald, sent to help investigate these two-legged wraithwolves. In the name of the High Queen, I command you to never speak of what you have seen with anyone, and to follow my instructions until this crisis has passed.”

  I expected the old woman to get angry or to ask a lot of questions. Instead, to my mild surprise, she drew herself up with pride.

  “How can I serve the High Queen?” said Cornelia.

  “You got more shells for that shotgun?” I said, dismissing the seal. She patted the pockets of her gray cardigan. Which hung on her bony frame like there was something heavy in the pockets, come to think of it. “Super. Then reload and come with us. You can keep watch while we’re questioning the survivor here.”

  Officer Kirby let out a groan, stirring.

  “We’re going to question him?” said Owen.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “One way or another, he’s going to tell us what he knows.”

  ***

  Chapter 14: Questions & Answers

  Kirby was still on his back from when Nadia had ripped off the Singularity device, so Owen used Kirby’s own handcuffs to bind his wrists. Then he took the traitorous officer under the arms, and Riordan lifted his ankles. Together they carried Kirby to the cellar doors, Nadia following. Mrs. Fischer, obeying Nadia’s orders, went to the front porch to keep watch for more wraithwolves, with strict instructions to return and warn them at once if more Homeland Security officers arrived. Owen was vaguely impressed that Mrs. Fischer jumped at Nadia’s instructions. All it had taken to compel obedience from his nosy neighbor was the High Queen’s seal.

  But that was the least of Owen’s concerns just now.

  Thirteen Homeland Security officers were dead, and eight of them were in Owen’s basement. There hadn’t been that many casualties among the Milwaukee branch since the Archon attack several years ago. That had shaken up the Milwaukee branch badly.

  This would be worse.

  This would be much worse.

  The treachery of the officers was bad enough. But using the illegal magic and forbidden technology to turn themselves into human/wraithwolf abominations was far more serious. The Inquisition was going to get involved. When it was over, the Milwaukee branch of Homeland Security would be gutted.

  And Owen could not see that as a bad thing.

  His family had almost been murdered today. If Nadia hadn’t been with him, the wraithwolves would have killed Anna and the girls. If they hadn’t been able to traverse the Shadowlands, it would have been too late. There had been threats against Owen’s family before. Criminals he had investigated had threatened his wife and children, though nothing had come of it.

  But never before had a pack of wraithwolves stormed into his house and tried to kill his wife and daughters.

  God, if he hadn’t built that panic room in the basement. Anna had always regarded it with bemusement, but now…

  One way or another, Owen was getting to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on.

  They descended to the basement. The smell of blood and burned flesh filled Owen’s nostrils. The eight dead officers lay sprawled across the floor, some of them burned from the spells that had killed them. Owen and Riordan carried Kirby to one of the pillars, and Riordan unlocked the handcuffs and shackled Kirby’s arms behind him, the officer's back resting against the pillar.

  “Might want to take the kids upstairs,” said Riordan. His voice was grim and flat. “This is going to get loud.”

  “Good idea,” said Nadia. “I’ll help if you want to keep an eye on Kirby.” Riordan nodded. “Owen…after we talk to Kirby, I think we’re going to have to contact the High Queen and ask for help. We can’t trust anyone in the local branch of Homeland Security, and we’re in over our heads. For that matter, even if we could trust anyone in the local branch, bullets wouldn�
�t work on the wraithwolves. We need some serious backup.”

  “Agreed,” said Owen. “Have you warned your brother? If the wraithwolves came after my family, they might go after your brother.”

  “I think they were after us,” said Nadia. “They’re not thinking clearly. The wraithwolves or the summoning spells are twisting their thoughts around. When we weren’t here, they decided to kill your family.” She tapped her phone, which she must have switched back on. “I texted my brother while you and Riordan were carrying Kirby. He’s fine, and there hasn’t been anything strange at the warehouse today.” She took a deep breath. “But if there’s any trouble, he’ll give me a call.”

  “Okay,” said Owen. “I’m going to get my family out now. I think I’ll send them upstairs. If more wraithwolves show up, Cornelia should give us plenty of warning. God knows she’s had enough practice peering out through the curtains.”

  He crossed to the panic room door and tapped the intercom button. “Anna?”

  “Owen?” Her voice crackled over the speaker. “Owen, is that you?”

  “It is,” said Owen. “Everyone’s safe out here. You can come out now. I think you and the girls should go upstairs until we’ve got everything cleaned up down here.”

  He glanced at the bodies on the floor. Maybe it just would be better to buy a new house.

  “Where was our first date?” said Anna.

  She was making sure that he was who he claimed to be. A sensible precaution.

  “It was at a shooting club,” said Owen. “When I was investigating your boss’s murder, I had to interview you, and you said that shooting was one of your hobbies. So when I asked you out, we went to the shooting club for the first time.”

  “You met your wife at a murder investigation?” said Nadia. “Jeez.”

  Owen looked at her. “Where did you meet your husband?”

  Riordan snorted, once.

  Nadia opened her mouth, closed it again. “Never mind.”

  “Who’s that with you?” said Anna.

  “Nadia MacCormac,” said Owen. “I told you about her.”