28

DON’T BITE THE CLAW THAT FEEDS YOU

We need to talk.” Nikolai was driving, which I actually found reassuring. I liked it when those canned hams he called hands were occupied.

“Really?” I was messing with the radio dials to see what kind of music Nikolai liked. I’d been expecting metal or rap, but he liked country. “You didn’t just come along because you wanted to hang out?”

I’d made that “Besties” bracelet for nothing.

“Quit clowning around,” Nikolai said irritably.

Easy for him to say. I had just lured twelve knights into a wooded area where forty-five pissed-off lycanthropes were waiting for them in wolf form, and in spite of everything, that didn’t go down easily. On top of that, I had just made myself a threatening presence in the home of a woman, and that bothered me. And Nikolai was sitting next to me, sweating aggression.

“Bernard wants you to become an administrator,” Nikolai said without preamble.

I looked at him as if he’d just said, “Hobbadoogawgaw ixnay on the brillo creamay in the pumpkin hammock.”

“Me,” I finally said, pointing both thumbs at my shoulders. “Administrator.”

“Yes.”

There was a paper lying on the front seat between us. I picked it up and began looking through it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for any articles about hell freezing over,” I said conversationally.

Nikolai’s mouth tightened. “Look at the front page instead.”

I did. There was another article about the Butcher of Abalmar, the nation’s latest serial killer. This one was particularly noteworthy because he or she focused on children.

“Bernard says we need you in Abalmar.”

“Does it strike you as sad,” I asked idly while I read, “that there have been so many serial killers called ‘The Butcher’ that we have to designate them by location now?”

Nikolai didn’t respond.

It was a disturbing article. I hadn’t had a lot of time to keep up on national news lately, and I missed it. Before the Clan, I’d had a lot of free time in between hunting and running over the decades, and I missed reading for fun and live music and learning to cook things and researching and hiking and even napping. Now I was living in a house with two other members of my claw, and it was strange. I didn’t miss being lonely, but sometimes I missed being alone. I didn’t miss hearing about serial killers, though. This one was killing young females and removing their entrails and leaving their bodies behind. Which was bad enough, but what was really freaking everyone out was that the killer seemed to be able to enter and leave heavily populated areas unseen.

“I’ll go,” I said. “But let me go in alone as a hunter. Forget this administrator nonsense.”

Nikolai sidestepped the whole administrator question for the moment. Not a good sign. “You’ll take Gabriel and the rest of your claw with you.”

Putting Gabriel and me together had been one of Bernard’s strokes of genius. Gabriel was a bit of a problem for the Clan because while his sister was Bernard’s mate, Gabriel tended to get in trouble. Gabriel didn’t always think before he spoke. But Nikolai trusted him, so Gabriel was the perfect choice to keep an eye on me, and I was well suited for keeping Gabriel out of sight and in line. His bluntness didn’t bother me, and I didn’t give a crap about his social or political connections.

Nikolai glanced sideways so that he could eye me balefully. “So you agree this killer is a supernatural?”

I put the paper down. “A lot of serial killers remove organs for trophies or food.”

Nikolai gave me an impatient look. “But?”

“There’s a kind of magic called anthropomancy that uses the entrails of young females to try to divine the future.” I sighed. I didn’t like thinking about it. “It’s one of the reasons witches in the stories so often prey on children. That and the whole virgin sacrifice thing. And that kind of magic would be strongest now, during harvest season. It sounds like the killer is misusing the Pax Arcana to conceal its movements too. Odds are this butcher is one of the cunning folk.”

Nikolai grimaced. He was wearing dark jeans and a gray hoodie, which had turned out to be a mistake. There were dried bloodstains on the jacket that he was having a hard time getting out. He ran a hand through his hair, and even that casual gesture made his jacket tight. “Bernard wants you to make this go away so the knights will stop flooding Abalmar.”

I shrugged. “Good. But you really want me being some kind of supervisor for the area?”

“I want you to be on another continent.” Nikolai’s glare wasn’t pro forma. “Maybe you’re not working for the enemy, but you’re too soft. And you encourage it in Bernard too. We should have killed that woman in there. And her children that are going to grow up hunting our friends.”

“I have rules,” I admitted. “But it’s not about winning the knights over. If we can convince them that we’re no threat to the Pax, their geas might force them to come to terms in spite of themselves. And killing people indiscriminately would make us a threat to the Pax.”

It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was something. When you’re trapped in a burning house, there’s no harm spitting.

“Whatever.” Nikolai dismissed my twaddle with a curt jerk of his chin. “We need Abalmar. It’s not as big as Green Bay, but it’s close, and it’s right in the middle of a lot of supply routes. Lots of meat-packing plants and military warehouses there.”

“Again, what’s that got to do with me taking charge?” I asked.

Nikolai looked like he’d swallowed a grenade. “Bernard is grooming you for bigger things.”

“I don’t want bigger things,” I said.

“I don’t like it, either,” Nikolai assured me. “The problem is, Bernard wants it. And maybe you haven’t noticed, but Bernard has a way of getting what he wants.”

“So, how’s the current leader in Abalmar going to like it when I come in and start moving the furniture around?”

Nikolai gave me an I’m-getting-to-that-fool kind of look. “That’s part of why Bernard wants you to go. Matthew only respects tough. He’s a good soldier, but he’s not a good manager. He’s running the tribe there like a biker gang, and it’s not working. He’s been given multiple warnings and nothing is changing.”

I thought I understood the subtext.

“I’m a hunter,” I informed him. “Not an assassin.”

The look Nikolai gave me then was enigmatic. “We’ll see.”

Nikolai gave me a few more logistics details and then let me out at “Jesse’s Garage,” though the original Jesse had died of colon cancer two owners ago. The newest owner was a clan member, and the operation was small enough that he’d been able to train up all the help he needed from werewolf stock. It was a useful place for turning captured or stolen vehicles into untraceable rides.

My claw was spread out all over the two repair bays.

Space had been cleared on a table so that Gabriel could lie on it, though the surface wasn’t particularly sanitary. He had a bottle of Tennessee sipping whiskey but he wasn’t sipping it; he was slugging it down while Paul picked silver shot out of Gabriel’s right thigh with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Gray-haired and fit, Paul had been a field medic for his Navy SEAL unit before leaving the service to work at a veteran’s hospital. It was there that he had been bitten by a freaked-out veteran who was “convinced” that he was becoming a werewolf.

Paul was chuckling to himself.

“What’s so damned funny?” Gabriel demanded irritably.

“I just remembered—the only reason I became a doctor was because I couldn’t get into veterinary school.” Paul’s chuckles became outright laughter.

Paul had a weird sense of humor.

One of the vans had a missing windshield, and another had a small hole centered right over the driver’s seat. I looked over at Tula and she smiled tightly. Tula had been in the Finnish military and only quit after they refused to let her go to sniper school. It was their loss; she was a hell of a shot, and I had no doubt that she was the one who had taken out the drivers. Brown-haired, busty, and attractive in a stocky way, she was lovingly reassembling her newly oiled rifle, a TRG-42. Apparently, it was a popular weapon in the Finnish military, or had been when Tula was a part of it.

Virgil came up to me and Nikolai as if he’d been waiting to pounce. “They’re hiding out somewhere near a brewery.” Bald, round-shouldered, and brown-skinned, Virgil had been a member of the Milwaukee police force for fifteen years before heading up some kind of special task force. I forget the task force’s name because it was called something other than what it was in order to get some kind of federal funding. Basically, Virgil had specialized in youth relations and tracking down runaways among gangs and pimp stables and homeless communities. And, eventually, a werewolf pack.

Virgil knew Milwaukee better than any other member of the Clan. He could tell you where you’d just come from within a block just by taking a sniff.

“There’s something weird about these vans too,” he said. “They’re old but they’re in practically new condition. But they still have that mothball smell, and the tires are old even if they aren’t worn down.”

“The knights probably use them for risky operations and then keep them in storage for long periods of time,” I said.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Virgil confirmed. “I’m going to talk to some people I know about abandoned warehouses around the breweries.”

“It could be the knights own a storage silo park around that area too,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s one of their favorite dodges—buy an entire storage facility and then rent the silos out to individual knights and their families so that the knights will have a secure storage area and the Templars will have a legit paper trail for the IRS.”

Virgil cursed. “A place like that will probably be a weapons depot.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But that’s not our concern any longer.”

They all heard me. They were werewolves.

I had no illusions about my claw. Nikolai had handpicked them to keep an eye on me. Gabriel was from Bernard’s inner circle even if he was in exile. Virgil was a detective who could monitor me. Paul was ex–special forces if he had to take me on up close. Tula was a markswoman who could take me out from a distance. But they were mine all the same.