Chapter Ten
Greenfield Road, Brixton, South London, New Year’s Day
Leanna sat at the head of the big wooden table at the house in Greenfield Road, the house that she shared with Adam Knight. It had been home to Samuel Smalling and James Beaumont too, before their betrayal.
She studied the two men sitting either side of her. Adam sat to her left, leaning his long, slim body back in his chair, stretching out his well-toned arms, trying to affect a nonchalant attitude. But Adam fooled no one. Leanna could see the nervousness in his sharp eyes. She could sense the simmering resentment bubbling beneath the surface. Adam was a seething ball of nerves and discomfort, and that was how she intended to keep him.
Warg Daddy sat opposite him, clothed in the black leather jacket and dark shades he wore everywhere. The leader of the Wolf Brothers seemed to fill the space with his bulk, rippling his huge arm muscles and flexing his wide shoulder blades, as if the constraints of sitting at the table in this domestic setting caused him some kind of physical discomfort. He gazed suspiciously across the table at Adam, clearly making him even more nervous than ever.
Leanna permitted herself a small smile. Warg Daddy had many uses, and keeping Adam in his place was one of them. But the big man needed to be kept in his place too. Not only had he questioned her orders, he had explicitly disobeyed her. The chair where she had expected to see Warg Daddy’s second-in-command was empty. ‘Where is Snakebite?’ she demanded, her voice like a whip. ‘I specifically instructed you to bring him to this meeting.’
She noticed Adam smirk at the word instructed. Let him smirk. She had things to say to him too. Things that would wipe the smile from his face.
Warg Daddy looked stung by her words. He lifted one huge hand and began to rub his smooth bald head with his thumb. ‘I don’t understand why you want him here,’ he said defensively. ‘Snakebite isn’t so good at talking. Or thinking. He gets bored too quickly. He’s better with his hands, especially when he has a knife in one of them. Know what I mean?’
Leanna treated him to a cold stare, watching him shrink under her gaze. She remembered the night on the Common when she’d first encountered him and his sidekicks, the Wolf Brothers. They’d had a plan to catch a werewolf, but Leanna had caught them instead. It had been tempting to kill them all, but Warg Daddy had convinced her to spare them. We could be good together, he’d suggested, and he’d been right. She had changed him into a werewolf, taken him as a lover, and he had already proved his worth as her henchman. But headstrong men like Warg Daddy responded well when she gave her affections sparingly. They responded best when she withdrew them entirely. Besides, she had particular reasons for wanting Snakebite at the War Council. The flame-haired giant had skills that even Warg Daddy didn’t know about.
‘I told you to bring Snakebite,’ said Leanna icily. ‘There is no need for you to understand why. Next time, do what I tell you.’
Warg Daddy rubbed his head again and nodded unhappily.
Leanna had been studying Warg Daddy’s DNA back at the lab. It had changed in many ways since he’d become lycanthropic and those changes were having physiological effects on his body. He had gained strength, and his athletic abilities were greatly enhanced even while in human form. His blood was able to carry significantly more oxygen, and his lungs had altered their structure to absorb oxygen and remove carbon dioxide more efficiently. His performance on the treadmill and exercise bike had improved dramatically.
His brain had altered too. The parts that processed his sense of smell and sight had grown larger. She had tested his night vision and found that he could see almost as well during the hours of darkness as during the day. His hearing had sharpened and his sense of smell was now as good as any dog. The increase in brain size had come at a cost however. The internal pressure on the skull gave him severe headaches and she had prescribed pills for him to take each day. Judging from the way he rubbed his head more and more often, the pills weren’t having much effect.
Leanna turned her attention to Adam. ‘Where were you last night?’ she barked. ‘I ordered you to follow Samuel and James. I told you not to let them out of your sight for a second.’
That wiped the smirk off his face, just as she had intended. Suddenly he was like a sullen little boy, caught doing something naughty at school. ‘I did follow them,’ he protested. ‘But they gave me the slip. They must have planned it in advance.’
Leanna lashed out at him with her tongue. ‘That was why I gave you your instructions,’ she snapped. ‘I wanted to know what they were up to.’
Adam had changed too, in interesting ways. His cardiovascular capacity had increased enormously, stimulated by his intense training regime. His brain structure had also changed, but in a different way to Warg Daddy’s. His senses had not developed to the same level. Instead his motor functions were evolving in tandem with his physical advances, giving him almost superhuman athletic and gymnastic performance. His intelligence level had increased too, making him useful but dangerous. She would need to keep him on a short leash, and eliminate him if he became too much of a threat.
‘Warg Daddy should have killed James last night when he had the chance,’ said Adam.
‘I will kill him,’ said Warg Daddy. ‘Just as soon as we find him.’ His nose still bore a red scratch where Samuel had clawed him during the fight with James.
‘No!’ shouted Leanna. ‘I already told you. I will kill him myself.’
‘Why don’t you just forget about him?’ said Adam sullenly, not looking at either her or Warg Daddy. ‘James is a distraction. There are more important things for us to deal with now.’
‘I will never forget about James,’ hissed Leanna. ‘Never. One day soon I will kill him. And I want you to find him for me.’
‘Me?’ said Adam in surprise. ‘Why me? Why not the Wolf Brothers?’
‘Because you know him better than any of us.’
‘But where should I look?’ asked Adam. ‘He could be anywhere by now.’
‘Use your wits, Adam,’ said Leanna. ‘Start with his family home. Check the school he used to go to, and the church where he killed that priest. Talk to the people he knew. Find out the places he might have gone. But stay out of his sight. I don’t want to scare him off.’
Adam shrugged, but he didn’t argue this time.
‘I have a task for you too, Warg Daddy,’ said Leanna. ‘I want you to find us somewhere new to live. Somewhere safe and secure.’
The Leader of the Pack looked puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with this place?’
‘James knows about it. He might tell someone. We need to move out of here, and I want to move today.’
Warg Daddy still wore a frown. ‘It’s New Year’s Day,’ he said. ‘How can I find us a house? All the rental agencies will be closed today.’
‘I know,’ said Leanna. ‘But I’m not asking you to use a rental agency. You have a particular skill set. I was thinking that you and the Brothers might be able to acquire a vacant property without anyone knowing. Somewhere large. Somewhere discreet.’
Warg Daddy stroked his thick black beard. ‘I catch your drift,’ he said.
Leanna treated him to a small smile. ‘Good. That’s excellent, Warg Daddy. I knew I could rely on you.’ She watched his face and saw a faint glimmer of relief at her words.
Rewards and punishments. These were the tools Leanna used to control her followers. Simple tools, but effective. It was how you trained a dog, and Warg Daddy and Adam were nothing more than dogs, even though they didn’t know it.
Warg Daddy might believe that he and Leanna were lovers, but the idea that she might actually love him was preposterous. Love was a stupid human emotion. Warg Daddy was useful to her, and he pleased her in bed, but there was nothing more to the relationship than that. One day he might no longer serve a useful purpose, and Leanna would discard him just as easily as she had picked him up. She was free of the shackles of emotions.
Her own brain scans had shown that since becomi
ng lycanthropic the parts of her brain that handled emotion and empathy had diminished in size. Her feelings had become muted and dulled. She remembered that as a girl she had been full of love. She had loved her parents and brother dearly. She had even loved her pet puppy. That kind of sentimentality disgusted her now. How could she have indulged in such weak and stupid behaviour? She was better off without it. When her puppy had died, she had cried for days, cried until her eyes and nose were red and raw. Yet all that grief had been for naught. It had not brought the dead pet back to life. Her father had bought her another puppy as a replacement, and the new one had been just as good as the one that had died. Why had she continued to cry, even after the new puppy arrived? It was senseless. She had cried when her mother had died too. A mother could not be replaced, but Leanna could no longer remember what had saddened her so. All mothers died eventually. It was the way of the world.
Last year, when she had murdered her father and brother, she had shed no tears. Her only feeling then had been the satisfaction of well-laid plans coming to fruition. But not all of Leanna’s feelings had shut down. Love may have gone, but in its place burned anger and hate. And all that hate was now directed at James. Adam would find him for her, and then she would kill him. The pleasure would be all hers.
‘That’s everything for now,’ she said.
‘Is that it?’ asked Warg Daddy in surprise. ‘I thought you had big plans to discuss.’
‘I do. We’ll talk again when Snakebite is with us. In the meantime you both have jobs to do.’
‘What about you?’ asked Adam. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I need to go back to the university one last time and clear everything away. I don’t want any of my research falling into the wrong hands.’ She thought of the DNA samples she had collected. Her own, Adam’s, and one from each of the Wolf Brothers. Analyzing the genetic changes had been a fascinating research project. Each one of the Brothers had changed in a different way since she had passed the condition to them with her bite. All of them had grown in strength and athletic ability. Some had developed super senses, some enhanced memory skills, some had faster reaction times. All were more capable than they had been before.
Most interesting of all was Snakebite. The man had started out a brute, performing poorly in all the IQ tests Leanna had given him. Yet in just a few weeks, Snakebite’s cognitive functions had sharpened dramatically. The corpus callosum that connected the left and right halves of his brain had grown by an order of magnitude. His IQ was approaching genius level, and his advances showed no signs of stopping. She was keen to run more tests to see if any further changes had taken place since last night’s full moon. Snakebite was well worth watching.
Adam had one final question for her. ‘What about that supervisor of yours at the university? Does she have any suspicions about what you’ve been doing? Perhaps you should eliminate her as a precaution.’
Leanna smiled her cold smile. The idea was tempting. Doctor Helen Eastgate had merely been a route to gain access to the laboratory equipment Leanna needed to carry out her tests. It would be a pleasure to dispose of her, just as Leanna had taken care of Professor Wiseman back in Romania. But while losing one professor may be regarded as a misfortune, losing both would look like carelessness and would raise far too many suspicions. Besides, Leanna might still need access to the lab to carry out further tests. ‘Don’t worry about Doctor Helen Eastgate,’ she said. ‘I have her under control. She suspects nothing.’
Chapter Eleven
Brookfield Road, Brixton Hill, South London, New Year’s Day
‘Come on, kid,’ said Kevin. ‘Get your coat on. We’re going out.’
Mihai peered at him from beneath his unruly mop of hair. ‘But Liz say we stay indoors. Is not safe outside.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kevin. ‘She’s a good woman, Liz. But mothers always fuss too much. That’s why you need your old grandpa, so you can have some fun now and again.’
Mihai grinned, his face seeming to light up. ‘Okay, Grandpa Kevin. We do what you say.’
Kevin reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Just keep it a secret, okay? This is just between you and me. Liz don’t need to know what we get up to when she ain’t around.’
Their first stop was the butcher’s shop down the road.
‘All right, Kevin?’ said the butcher when he saw him. He was a big man with a red face and straw hair. He wore a navy striped butcher’s apron over a white coat, but his sleeves were rolled up, revealing a pair of beefy arms. An old-fashioned trilby hat perched jauntily on his head. ‘How you doing there, mate?’
The butcher reminded Kevin of his own father. The traditional butcher’s clothing, the cheery smile, the polished metal worktop, the smell of hung meat. Entering the shop was like walking back into his own childhood. The butcher was in his early forties by the looks of him, about the same age Kevin’s old man had been when he passed away. Kevin could have taken over the family business if he’d wanted to, following in his father’s footsteps, just as his father had followed his own father before him. Bailey & Son could have become Bailey & Grandson. But Kevin had longed for adventure. He’d wanted to travel beyond South London, so he’d joined the army, hoping to see the world. To his dismay he’d spent the next five years posted to Northern Ireland, trying to stop the Catholics from killing the Protestants and the Protestants from killing the Catholics. Senseless. He’d never understood what their problem was. But he’d learned one thing from his time in the army – loyalty. You picked your side, and you stuck with it, through good times and bad. Mostly bad, in Kevin’s case. If only he could have learned that lesson before he’d left his family home, he would never have gone in the first place, but that was life for you.
‘I’m not so bad, Gary,’ he said to the butcher. ‘Not so bad. Have you met the kid? This is Mihai.’
‘Hey, kid, nice to meet you,’ said the butcher. ‘I’d shake your hand, but I got a bit of blood on me right now.’ He raised his hands to show the stainless steel chainmail gloves he wore, spattered with gore.
Mihai peeped nervously over the counter at the big man, staring apprehensively at his metal gloves.
The butcher gave a hearty laugh. ‘So what can I do for you gentlemen this fine morning?’
Kevin looked up at the meat hooks that lined the wall behind the counter. Usually they were all hung with carcasses, but today half the hooks were empty. ‘What you got in today, Gary? Any specials?’
The butcher gesticulated with his brawny arms. ‘We’re a bit short, to be honest, Kev, what with the market being closed for the holidays.’ He lowered his voice and leaned over the counter conspiratorially. ‘And I’m not too optimistic after all the trouble last night. The soldiers are closing roads, searching vehicles, generally getting in everyone’s way. To tell the truth, I don’t know when I’ll get fresh supplies. If I were you, I’d stock up now.’
‘Good advice,’ agreed Kevin. ‘We’ll take as much as we can carry.’
They hauled the meat back to Liz’s apartment and stowed it safely in the freezer. ‘This’ll keep us going for a while,’ Kevin told Mihai. ‘But we’re gonna have to do some strategic thinking if we’re gonna keep our bellies full. But you know what they say? Crisis breeds opportunity. Know what that means, kid?’
‘Crisis, bad; opportunity, good?’ suggested Mihai.
Kevin beamed at him. ‘You’re a bright spark, ain’t you? You and me, we’ll go far. Come on, there’s something I want to show you.’
‘What is it, Grandpa Kevin?’
‘Come in here,’ said Kevin, leading the way to the room where he slept. A sleeping bag was rolled up on an old mattress that Liz had given him. Kevin reached inside the sleeping bag, pulled out a cardboard shoe box and placed it on the mattress.
‘What’s in the box, Grandpa Kevin?’ asked Mihai excitedly.
‘Open it and see.’
Mihai kneeled down cautiously and flipped the lid of the box open. He stared at the contents
of the box in amazement. ‘Is money,’ he said in a hushed voice.
‘Yeah, money,’ said Kevin. ‘That’s my entire life savings in there, kid. Don’t seem like a whole lot, when you look at it like that.’
‘But Grandpa Kevin, I never saw so much money. You are rich man.’
Kevin chuckled. ‘Not exactly rich, but I reckon it’s enough for us to get started.’
‘Started on what?’ asked Mihai. ‘What you going to spend it on?’
‘Good question,’ said Kevin. ‘You put your finger right on it. It’s a funny thing, money,’ he mused. He picked up a wad of bank notes from the shoe box and flicked through it. ‘It’s just pieces of paper, ain’t it? Paper’s cheap. It grows on trees. Don’t cost a lot to print money, I reckon. Money’s only worth something if people think it is. In times like this people start to wonder, do they really believe in money? Can they trust pieces of paper? They start to put their trust in things they can hold in their hands. Things they can eat or drink, for instance.’
Mihai was listening to his words carefully. ‘So we going to buy food?’ he asked.
‘Not food,’ said Kevin. ‘We already got enough food to keep us going for now. Buy too much and it just goes off. We’re gonna buy something else. Something better than food. Something that will keep a long time and that will be worth more and more the less people believe in money.’
‘What is it, Grandpa Kevin?’ asked Mihai excitedly. ‘What we going to buy?’
Lycanthropic (Book 2): Wolf Moon (The Rise of the Werewolves) Page 5