Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “If they’re all in that abandoned church,” said another lieutenant, “why not just dump a bunch of firebombs on it and blast them all to hell?”

  “Won’t work,” said Nadia, leaning against the wall next to Riordan. “They’ll regenerate. If we do bomb the place, we’ll have to wait until they come out to get away from the fire, and then we’ll have to kill them anyway.”

  “And we need to capture all the transformation devices,” said Tyth. “The High Queen was very clear on that. She doesn’t want any of the things loose in Wisconsin. Or anywhere.”

  “What’s our tactical plan?” said Alcazar.

  “Lady Tythrilandria and Nadia have exceptional scouting capabilities,” said Owen. Despite what she had said, Owen could not quite bring himself to call her Tyth. “They will go ahead and scout the church and report back to us. The four Homeland Security SUVs sitting out front? We’ll take them to the church and park out of sight on the county highway. Lady Tythrilandria and Nadia will scout and return to us. If the targets are in the basement, we will drive onto the church property, encircle the building, and attack. Remember, the targets are no longer sane and will be irrationally aggressive. Unless they immediately surrender by removing their transformation devices, you will have no choice but to use lethal force.” He nodded to Giles. “Major Giles is the only one who doesn’t have access to magic, so he’ll coordinate from the vehicles. Any questions?”

  There were several. The soldiers of the Legion were all veterans, and they knew that proper planning and preparation could mean the difference between life and death. Most of the questions dealt with the capabilities of the hybrid wraithwolves, and since Nadia had killed most of the hybrids, she answered the questions. Owen watched the growing respect among the wizards as they spoke with Nadia. The men of the Legion were probably the best-trained and most capable human soldiers in the world, and they were unfailingly professional. It was obvious they had thought Nadia the Shadow Hunter’s pretty girlfriend and nothing more, and watching their wary respect would have been amusing under other circumstances.

  Then it was time for a comms check, and they piled into the SUVs and set off for Cedarburg and the Church of the Modern Apostles.

  ###

  I rode in the backseat of Owen’s car, with Giles sitting up front. Riordan and Tyth sat in the back, and since I was shorter and smaller than both of them, guess who got to ride squeezed in the middle seat?

  Yeah. Being short is sometimes really annoying.

  “So,” I said to Tyth, who was fiddling with her radio earpiece. “How do you like being the High Queen’s…well, secretary?”

  “Personal assistant?” said Riordan.

  “The title of handmaiden, like, includes all those duties,” said Tyth. “I do whatever her Majesty asks of me.”

  “That must be a great honor,” said Giles. The poor man seemed a little starstruck by a handmaiden of the High Queen and the soldiers of the Wizard’s Legion. But he’d had a rough day. Not as bad as ours, of course, but learning that dozens of Homeland Security officers had become ravening insane monsters had come as a shock.

  “Oh, it totally is,” said Tyth with complete sincerity. “Her Majesty is always traveling all over Earth and Kalvarion. I think I’ve seen more of Kalvarion than I ever did when I actually lived there, and definitely more of Earth. It’s not like the old days when we both worked for…”

  I coughed. Tyth was a friend, but she liked to talk, and I didn’t think she 100% grasped the “shadow” part of a shadow agent. Then again, she was a handmaiden of the High Queen, and that carried a lot of authority among both Elves and humans.

  “For our old boss,” said Tyth without missing a beat. “I hardly ever left the Elven free cities in the old days.” She paused. “I think our old boss would be proud of what we’re doing now. He knew that humans and Elves had to stand together, or else our enemies would destroy us separately. I just wish that he was here to help her Majesty now.”

  I sure didn’t. Tyth had actually loved Morvilind. I mean, he wasn’t a lovable man by any stretch of the imagination, but Tyth had regarded him with a good deal of awe. In her eyes, he had been a lone hero, the man who had single-handedly defeated the Archons, opened the Great Gate, and heralded a new and hopefully better age for both Elves and humans. I suppose all that was true from a certain angle, but that overlooked Morvilind’s cruelty, his callousness, his utter ruthlessness, and the fact that he had gone through shadow agents like paper towels.

  Tyth and I were just the ones who had happened to outlive him.

  But she was a friend, and I didn’t want get into a fight with her.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How’s that fruit company?” said Tyth. “I was there when your brother talked her Majesty into giving him the license. I think it’s going to do a lot of good for the farmers of Kalvarion. In the old days, the farmers had to give a big part of their produce to their lords, and then the Archons just enslaved everybody. If they can sell to the humans of Earth, that will be, like, a really big deal.”

  “So far, so good,” I said, which was mostly true. “We haven’t turned a profit yet, but we should be able to do it next year when the harvest comes in.” I talked about distribution and grocery stores and refrigeration costs for a while. Either Tyth really was interested in the topic, or she was good at faking it.

  “We’re here,” said Riordan.

  The SUVs pulled off to the side of the county road. We were in a wooded area, forests rising on either side. I bet drivers hit a lot of deer here during the winter months. A few feet ahead, a gravel driveway turned to the right into the trees. It looked old and half-overgrown with weeds.

  But. Some of the weeds had been pressed down by recent tire tracks.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling out my aetherometer. “Give me a second, and I’ll see if there are any two-legged wolves hiding in the trees.”

  I scowled at the aetherometer. The device took a moment, and then the dials settled into a reading. It detected the auras of Tyth and Owen and the soldiers of the Wizard’s Legion. I didn’t see any of the peculiar auras of the Fusion devices nearby. But there was a big concentration of them not all that far away, maybe a couple hundred yards into the trees.

  “Okay,” I said again, putting the aetherometer away. “It doesn’t look like they’ve seen us. But there’s a big group of those summoning devices nearby. Probably in the church basement like Kirby said.”

  “I think we had better scout ahead,” said Tyth.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That’s your rally point,” said Riordan, pointing at the end of the driveway. “If you’re both not back there in ten minutes, we’re going in after you.”

  I nodded. “We’ll be back.”

  “Be careful,” said Riordan.

  I started to make a joke, but I stopped myself. Riordan looked so serious. But that man had put himself through hell to keep me safe, often with no help from me whatsoever.

  “I will,” I said.

  I took a deep breath and got out of the car, and Tyth followed suit.

  We walked along the shoulder of the road to the driveway, our boots crunching against the gravel. Just as well there hadn’t been any snow yet. We reached the end of the driveway, and I started up its length. I thought the driveway was about a hundred and fifty yards long, and the barren forest around it created sort of a tunnel effect. At the end of that tunnel, I saw a clearing with a dilapidated white church and a crumbling parking lot.

  There were a half-dozen cars in the lot. Guess Warren’s followers had used their own vehicles to drive to their weird little murder club.

  “Ready?” said Tyth.

  “Yep,” I said. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”

  At three, we both cast the Cloak spell and vanished from sight. I could hold the Cloak spell in place for about twelve or thirteen minutes while moving around. Tyth could do it for three-quarters of an hour. I was a more powerful wizard overall than T
yth and could unleash far more destructive power than she could, but she simply had a better natural ability for illusion magic. She had offered to scout alone, but I had nixed that idea. If something happened to her, she would need help.

  Better to send in two.

  I jogged up the driveway, wrapped in the Cloak spell, and came to the parking lot and the church. I took a loop around the church, looking for guards, but I didn’t see anyone. Evidently, Warren and his goons thought themselves safe.

  Like wolves in their den.

  The church’s doors stood open, and I climbed up the concrete steps and into the lobby. Or the narthex – I think the lobby of a church is called a narthex, but don’t hold me to that. It was a wreck, the carpet moldering, the paint peeling, the air stinking of mildew and rot. I walked into the church proper. Rotting pews faced the altar, and shafts of dim gray light leaked through holes in the ceiling and the broken windows.

  There was no sign of the wraithwolves.

  But the smell of blood was very strong.

  I stepped into the corner, dropped the Cloak spell, and took a moment to catch my breath, keeping track of the count in my head. After I got my breathing under control, I cast the spell to detect magic, focusing it on the floor. At once, I felt the strange, twisted power of the Fusion devices beneath my feet – they were in the basement. I cast the aurasight spell and focused it. I saw numerous auras below the floor, all of them tainted with the bloodlust and rage I had seen in Kirby’s emotions.

  I counted twenty-two of them.

  I wondered if that was all the wraithwolves.

  Well, we were about to find out.

  I looked at one of the broken windows, and an idea came to me. I cast the Cloak spell again, and hurried outside, circling around the church’s foundation. As I expected, the basement had window wells, and most of the windows were broken. Through one of the windows, I saw the harsh glare of LED work lights, and I crouched by the window well, peering through it.

  I saw several men wearing Homeland Security uniforms, and the smell of blood rose to my nostrils. A man’s voice rose to my ears, pleasant and commanding, and I recognized Kyle Warren.

  It sounded like he was giving a pep talk.

  “We’ll do it tonight,” said Warren. “That’s our best opportunity. Brauner and all his cronies will be there, and some of the Elven nobles. We can rid humanity of them both with one stroke – both the corrupt human politicians and the leeches of the nobles.”

  He definitely wasn’t worried about a charge of elfophobia.

  “The Elven nobles can use magic,” said another voice.

  “We’ll eliminate them first,” said Warren. “Then we can take care of Brauner and his friends.”

  I’d heard enough, and I had used six of my ten minutes. I jogged back to the mouth of the driveway, dropped my Cloak spell so Riordan could see me, and waited. About halfway through minute nine, Tyth reappeared. She wasn’t nearly as winded as I had been, but she was better with the Cloak spell.

  “Cutting it close,” I said.

  “I wanted to get really good information for the soldiers,” said Tyth. “I watched the enemy through a broken window well.” I nodded. “There’s twenty-two of them, and they’re listening to the leader. I think it’s that Warren guy you mentioned.”

  “He is,” I said. “Let’s check in with Owen and Alcazar…and then it will be time to move.”

  The familiar pre-fight tension settled over me. But I was used to it. I had spent over a century and a half fighting to the death every single day, so I knew how to handle myself. And my magic was probably the single biggest advantage that we had in this coming fight.

  We got back into the car.

  “Well?” said Owen.

  “Twenty-two of them,” I said. “They’re gathered in the basement. Looks like Warren is giving them a pep talk. I think they’re getting ready to go after Arnold Brauner tonight.” I suppose Brauner would make an easy target. I’d broken into his house without much trouble, and while his security would stop a normal thief, it wouldn’t do anything against the Fusion wraithwolves.

  “The charity dinner,” said Giles.

  “Has to be,” said Owen.

  “What charity dinner?” said Riordan.

  “Every year,” said Owen, “Governor Arnold has a charity dinner on the main floor of the sports arena in downtown Milwaukee. It’s tonight. Arnold Brauner will be there, along with his sons, his friends, and a lot of the business and political leaders of Wisconsin. Duke Tamirlas himself sometimes makes an appearance.”

  “They were talking about Elven nobles,” said Tyth. “How that might slow them down.”

  “Well, we’re going to slow them down first,” said Owen. He tapped his earpiece. “Captain Alcazar?”

  My earpiece crackled with voices as Alcazar gave orders. The soldiers of the Wizard’s Legion settled on a simple plan. We would drive at speed into the clearing and surround the church, and the soldiers would throw flashbang grenades into the basement. That would stun the humans, who would promptly transform into wraithwolves, and the killing would begin.

  Hopefully, we would kill them before they killed us.

  “Stay close to me,” said Riordan. “I’ll keep them off you.”

  I nodded. When we wound up in fights, that was our usual approach. Riordan, with his Shadowmorph blade, could kill nearly anything, and that weapon had already proven effective against the Fusion wraithwolves. While he did that, I unleashed volleys of destructive magic.

  “Time to move, people,” said Alcazar. “Go!”

  The SUVs roared to life, turned, and shot down the driveway. Owen went last, his unmarked car rolling along the gravel. We skidded to a halt in our assigned position, just outside the church’s front doors, and I saw the SUVs moving around the church, Wizard’s Legion soldiers storming out of them in full tactical kit. Several of them advanced a few steps and flung flashbang grenades. The grenades clattered into the window wells and smashed through the glass, and a half-second later I heard the thumps as the grenades went off.

  Riordan settled himself in front of me, his Shadowmorph blade ready. Tyth and Owen stood on either side, already summoning magic. I saw a few wisps of smoke drift through the church lobby (narthex?) and I heard the roar of wraithwolves through the doors.

  “Here they come,” said Riordan, and five Fusion wraithwolves burst through the ruined doors and rushed down the stairs towards us. I heard glass shatter throughout the church as other wraithwolves erupted out of the windows and charged. Fire and lightning and ice exploded through the cold afternoon air as the Wizard’s Legion unleashed their spells.

  My own power surged through me, and I hurled a volley of lightning globes. There were five wraithwolves, so I summoned five globes, and each one struck the chest of a wraithwolf. The creatures howled in agony as my lightning ripped through them, the power crackling up and down their furred limbs, but I hadn’t hit them hard enough to kill.

  Riordan did, though, when he attacked. His sword of force took off the head of the nearest wraithwolf, and the next creature lunged at him. He dodged out of the way, and the wraithwolf caught its balance and turned to attack again, only for Owen’s blast of magical fire to burn into its skull. The other two wraithwolves, recognizing me as the greater threat, bounded towards me, but Tyth struck first. She hurled a lightning globe that shocked the first wraithwolf, and the creatures tangled into each other.

  It didn’t slow them down for long, but more than long enough for me to pull together power for another spell. I flicked my wrist, and a thumb-sized sphere of fire leaped from my hand. It had all the force of a large explosion but bound together in a small space. The sphere drilled a tunnel through the head of the first wraithwolf, and then I sent it burning through the skulls of the next two. When I did that to anthrophages, I could kill eight or nine of them before the spell ran out of power. The skulls of the hybrid wraithwolves were far thicker, and the dense bone soaked up the fire more quickly.
r />   But it was still enough to kill them.

  The five wraithwolves lay dead at our feet, and even as I looked, they shrank back into human form.

  “That is weird,” said Tyth.

  “And it’s not over yet,” I said. The boom and rumble of spells echoed over the clearing, and I heard Giles giving orders over my earpiece, sending one group of soldiers to reinforce the other. “Let’s move!”

  Riordan, Owen, Tyth, and I ran around the church. We helped three struggling men overcome wraithwolves, and by the time we completed our circuit of the church, the battle was over. None of our men had died, though four of them had taken wounds, one of them severe enough that he might lose the leg. Sixteen wraithwolves had gone down.

  Six of them had gotten away, racing into the woods to the south.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said one of the soldiers over the radio. “They hit us too fast. We were fully engaged. If they had attacked us from the back, we’d have been dead. Instead, they ran for it.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” I said into my microphone. “Captain Alcazar, what we need right now is a count of the devices. Your men all know the spell to sense magic?”

  “They do, ma’am,” said Alcazar.

  “Then have anyone who’s not hurt search the church and collect the devices from the dead officers,” I said. “We need to know how many hybrid wraithwolves are left.”

  Even with four of their number wounded and two more soldiers attending to them, the remaining six wizards went about their work with efficiency. Five minutes later, sixteen Fusion devices sat in a heap on the church steps.

  A thorough search of the church with both spells and my aetherometer had found no more.

  So. Mr. Hood had given Warren and Hopkins forty-eight Fusion devices. Fourteen of them were currently sitting in the Quells’ panic room. Sixteen more were sitting on the steps of the abandoned church. Six more had escaped, and Giles hadn’t found Warren’s body as he identified the dead officers. Which meant the remaining wraithwolves still had their leader.