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Chapter 23

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Day 160 of the re-emerged Hat Island pack, Thursday, Nov. 14, near Kamloops, B.C.

Benny-wolf knew where to go. But like the good hunter that he was, he didn’t go there directly. Instead, he headed south out toward the road, and the circled around to where the sniper was still watching.

Watching for what, Benny-human wondered. What was he waiting for? Another chance at Ryder?

Or waiting for Ryder to die? Would shooting an Alpha at a distance constitute a challenge? Benny didn’t think so. But maybe the sniper had some plan in mind to grab the pack bonds if Ryder was dying.

But he’s not, Benny thought fiercely. Ryder was alive, and he was going to stay that way.

Benny-wolf paid no attention to Benny-man. The wolf was on a hunt, even if he was still in human form. The wolf probably would have shifted, but Benny had persuaded him that having a gun would be useful when they reached the sniper.

The wolf seemed skeptical. He wanted to shred the man with his claws for shooting Ryder. And Benny admitted it had appeal. But he also wanted some answers about this conspiracy, and they were fast eliminating all the people who might have answers.

If the sniper was a Campbell, moreover, he might know things like who was the Chinese Alpha who wanted to wage war on Tanaka for control of the World Council. Were there other partners? What were the plans? And maybe even information about the Pied Piper. Where was he? Did Campbell know his name? How did he send wolves to the Penticton pack?

Benny-man had questions. He smiled a bit at that. He always had questions.

The wolf was just intent on his mission — kill the sniper.

Even as a human, Benny moved quietly, although he was more of a creature of the city than of the forest. Only his few years in the Okanogan had involved any kind of woods-craft. He’d learned to pass almost unnoticed in Southeast Asia as a teenager, blending in to the masses of people there who were on the move. Refugees flowing into Thailand, people trying to return home to Vietnam and Laos. And of course all of the people fleeing Cambodia. Benny had moved among them, carrying whatever needed to be moved — information, money, weapons, drugs. A small, teenaged boy could go places adults couldn’t.

Teen boys had no sense of death. Benny had been fearless because of it. He had nothing to lose — it was already gone. His home, his pack, his father. After a while, he could hardly remember any of it. There was just the adrenaline rush of the underground, and the companionship of his wolf.

He hadn’t wanted to leave it when his father appeared one day and said they were going to the States. Benny barely knew where the United States was, and for most of the men he worked with, the U.S. was the enemy who had abandoned them to another enemy and left them with despots like Pol Pot. Benny did not want to leave Chang Mai. His father didn’t listen. And his father was dominant enough to make his son come with him, whether he wanted to or not.

And the country he’d ended up in was as different from the country he’d left as could be. He experienced snow for the first time. He was in a rural high school with its unfathomable prejudices, and giggly girls, and sports teams that made no sense.

He spoke English, although he wasn’t convinced his new classmates did. He also spoke Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, and French. He didn’t admit it. He thought his classmates were foolish, immature and silly.

He got kicked out of school for fighting his first week there. A kid had taunted him, calling him names. The names meant nothing to Benny, but he recognize the intent — and he’d lashed out with his foot, clipping the boy’s kneecap, and putting him in the hospital. He was suspended for three days, while his father smoothed everything over.

No one taunted him again.

No one spoke to him at all. No one, except Ms. George, the high school counselor. And she had helped him to see the high school as just one more environment to study and understand. One more group of people to fit into seamlessly. She’d gotten him into a martial arts dojo. Encouraged him to use his linguistic abilities to learn Spanish — the only ‘foreign’ language the school offered. And she got him to read books. At first he read because he liked Ms. George. And then he read because the books were about the war he’d been a part of. They were wrong about a lot, he told his father. His father agreed. “They often are,” his father said. “But good authors ask us to think. And that’s important. But accurate observation is difficult. Perhaps even impossible. Can you accurately describe your school to me? Are you sure?”

And that became a game between him and his father — Benny’s observations of a rural Washington high school and its mix of whites, Mexican migrants, and Colville Native Americans, and all the conflicts that produced. And a bemused Ms. George helped him find books to answer some of his questions.

His father had gone down to the school to thank Ms. George personally, and fell for her. But by then Benny was graduating — at the top of his class — and headed to University of Washington, planning to major in anthropology, with a specialty in languages. At UW, he’d learned Japanese and Chinese — not Russian, for some reason. He had been learning Russian from Ayta....

His father had cautioned him to not reveal his experience in Southeast Asia, and his facility for languages. “You’ll end up working for the CIA as I did,” he said grimly. “And I don’t want that for you.”

No, instead he’d worked for his father, who by then a pack Alpha, and for the Northwest Council of Alphas. Alpha Johannsen had ambitions, and the Council was all powerful, back then. Powerful in part because of Benny’s abilities as an intelligencer — to gather information and make sense of it.

He’d developed a new way of passing unnoticed — he created a persona of a carefree playboy with the financial resources to indulge himself. It allowed him to travel throughout the West Coast — anywhere really. He tamped down his personal dominance, just as he had as a teenager in Thailand. He used charm instead of his fists.

Usually the charm worked, but Benny was under no illusions how dangerous the work was. He honed his martial arts skills. He had never had a lot of concern about killing someone — it had been kill or be killed when he was in Chang Mai. But he got interested in the benefits of yoga, tai chi, meditation, in part because he heard the anguish in so many pack houses about the number of girls who didn’t make it through first shift. Maybe if shifters learned to calm the girls’ fears and empower them?

And then it had blown up when Benny had come face-to-face with what the Council really did with his information. He quit. Ended up with Margarite for a few years. Good thing he’d stayed with Muay Thai and the other martial arts. The Council hadn’t taken kindly to his resignation. But they finally backed off — probably his father had something to do with that, or maybe they realized he wasn’t talking about Council secrets. The assassins stopped coming.

But he felt trapped, and it was Margarite who had sent him off to school at Berkeley.

He smiled thinking about it. Some key women in his life had made sure he went to school.

And then he’d drifted into Stefan Lebenev’s orbit and Wolf Harbor.

Benny shut down his thoughts there. No, he told himself. I can’t face that and take care of this crisis too. While he’d been musing about his past, though, his wolf had worked his way around behind the sniper. Didn’t the sniper sense Benny?

Well he would soon enough.

Let me have control back, Benny asked his wolf — and that in itself was a change. The man ordered and commanded his wolf, he didn’t ask it. But Benny was accepting the fact that his wolf was as dominant as he was — and didn’t that sound like schizophrenia? Multiple personalities? Graduate school in psychology had been a revelation — Benny had felt like he was a walking version of the whole DSM-5.

But his wolf ceded power back to the man. Benny blinked a bit, and then brought his gun out of his waistband. “Campbell?” he said. “Let’s talk.”

The man whirled, but Benny’s steady stance with a pistol pointed at his head, stopped him from bringing the rifle around. “You forgot to watch your back,” Benny observed.

The man said nothing. He was poised, watchful. Benny didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was submitting. Instead, Benny increased his own wariness. Watch our back, he told his wolf. We may not be alone out here.

“So you’re out here doing your grandfather’s work?” Benny said conversationally. “He leaves you out here, while your cousin gets to try for pack rank? What do you get out of it?”

“I get to live,” the man said.

Benny snorted. “You think shooting your new Alpha is going to increase your longevity? You didn’t get the job done, by the way.”

“Who says I’m done?” Campbell countered.

“I do,” Benny said coldly, then dropped his filters and let the man see just what he was up against. Campbell paled. “So let’s talk. I gather your grandfather thinks he’s a better partner for the conspiracists who want to overthrow the World Council? Delusions of glory?”

Campbell shrugged. “Can’t be worse than McKenzie. Really, we should be thanking that brother of yours for getting rid of him. I told Angus that we’d be better off to try to get the new Alpha to step up to partner with the Chinese than to try to run this pack ourselves. But Grandfather is raging. And so, like the rest of the family, I just shut up and did as I was told.”

“Which included running this camp of would-be militants? Starving young shifters to nearly feral states? Doing dominance fights to the death? Those your ideas? Or are you going to blame Angus for them?” Benny asked.

“Actually they were Bjorn Hansen’s strategies,” he answered. “But they were working. So I continued them. Locking my cousin up in the basement was my idea though. Grandfather liked it — belt and suspenders. Bait to lure the Alpha in, and I get a shot at him. Or who knows? Mark steps up and takes the Alpha out himself.”

“That would have been a surprise to you all when Mark Campbell became Alpha of the pack, though,” Benny observed, watching the man. Ah, he thought, seeing the man look smug. “You would have shot him then.”

“Like I said, Grandfather likes belts and suspenders.”

Benny snorted. Why anyone thought that was a good thing or a compliment was beyond him. It was actually an insult, but never mind. “So this grand plot,” Benny said, shoving his dominance at the man. Alpha’s question didn’t require a pack Alpha, contrary to popular belief. It just required dominance. “Originally it was Chen in Vancouver, the Chinese Alpha, and McKenzie. Who else?”

“The recruiter,” Campbell said, then looked puzzled as if he wasn’t sure why he was answering.

Benny raised an eyebrow. “The recruiter,” he said neutrally.

“A man out of Vancouver,” Campbell said slowly as if he too was curious about the man. “Chen charged him with finding likely recruits and sending them our way. We gave them some training, and then sent them on to Chen as he requested. And all of that came to a screeching halt two weeks ago. But you probably know more about that than I do.”

Benny shrugged. “Probably,” he agreed. “Bjorn Hansen must have been pissed.”

“He lost it,” Campbell said. “Went on a rampage. Sent our most experienced wolves after various targets in Vancouver. None of them came back. He threw more of them away. He was after something he called dònglì diànchí.” Campbell mangled the word so badly, Benny barely recognized it. “Said if we had that, nothing else would matter. No one would be able to stop us.”

“Did he tell you what it was?” Benny asked, not mentioning it was a who, not a what.

“He may have told Grandfather, but I wasn’t in the loop,” Campbell said. “I was told to just keep the recruits flowing.” He sounded bitter.

“Do you have a name for the other partners? The Chinese? The recruiter?”

“The Chinese Alpha I met years ago,” he answered. “The last time McKenzie made a bid for power and got left holding the bag for the rich and famous. He was introduced as the Emperor of China, and his men all called him Emperor, not Alpha. Was one of the most dominant men I’ve ever met — more than Anton Vuk, if you ask me. Of course, no one did.”

Interesting, Benny thought. He thought briefly about letting this man live so he could learn more. No, his wolf insisted. Kill. Benny assured him he would.

“And the recruiter?”

“Goes by the name of Li, Barry Li,” he replied. “No clue if its real.”

“L-i or L-e-e?” Benny asked. Campbell stared at him.

“You think I got a look at his driver’s license or something?” he demanded. “No clue. He’s Chinese. Must be close to full-Chinese, because he’s even shorter than you are. I’m guessing he’s in his 40s? Not as young as the recruits, although you can’t tell by looking.”

Benny nodded. Would have helped to have known if he was out of the Mandarin or Cantonese community. There were a lot of Chinese in Vancouver.

Shifter, his wolf warned. Behind us. Stranger.

Benny pulled the trigger, shooting the man in front of him between the eyes, and then whirled, and pulled the trigger again at the man his wolf said was there. He pulled the shot just a bit in case his wolf was mistaken and it was an ally, not a threat. He immediately moved to his left and dropped to a crouch behind a tree.

His wolf huffed at the idea of such a mistake. Benny snorted. He heard the crash in the underbrush caused by the man falling to the ground, but he waited. He didn’t hear the man move. Benny was confident he got him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

He waited. Dying, his wolf pronounced. Benny moved silently in a half-circle to approach where he thought the man was. He was right — but the man was expecting him and brought his gun up. Benny flattened, and then crawled forward until he could take another shot.

Stranger, he confirmed. He had no way of knowing if the man was Penticton pack or not — probably was, he had the look — but he didn’t much care. He’d shot at him. And Benny considered that act carried a death sentence. He fired again, hitting the man in the T-zone.

Guns weren’t his specialty. Unlike Ryder or Jake who had military training and were more familiar with weapons, Benny knew just enough to get the job done. But his accuracy was second to none. What he shot at, he hit.

He walked over to the dead body, and grimaced. Two dead men. He couldn’t leave them out here. He grabbed this one and shouldered the burden in a fireman’s carry. He’d have to make two trips.

When he got to the lodge, there was a second bike parked next to his. Ken’s. Well, he wasn’t surprised. Titus was unlikely to leave him out here with no backup. He whistled softly, and a man stood up in the shadows of the lodge. “About time you got back,” Ken said. “Been keeping the fire going for you.”

“Kind of you,” Benny said. There were two other men with Ken, which did surprise him. “I get a whole team?”

“More that there wasn’t enough space in the vehicles for everyone,” Ken answered. “There’s not much that we couldn’t handle between the two of us.”

“True enough,” Benny conceded with a laugh. “There’s another body out there, if someone wants to go fetch it. Might take backup, but I don’t think there’s anyone else.”

The two security guards nodded and headed out the way Benny had come. He noticed they both had weapons. A year ago, they wouldn’t have. He shook his head. “I take it the rest of the team headed into town? How’s Ryder doing?” he asked.

“Still hanging in there,” Ken answered. “Never seen a man heal that fast. Surprised he made it, to be honest.”

Benny nodded. “Benefit of having a mate,” he answered, keeping it simple.

“Something to see,” Ken agreed. He looked at the dead body. “You know him?”

Benny shook his head. He took out his phone and snapped a picture. “Let’s get him downstairs,” Benny said. “Add him to the bodies already there.”

“We did some exploring,” Ken said, and he picked up the man effortlessly. Benny grimaced. Maybe he should add more weights to his exercise routines. He carried the body down to the basement. “This place is huge, actually,” Ken continued. “This is the worst part of the building. I think they left it bad in case authorities showed up while they did improvements to the rest of it.”

That made sense, Benny conceded. He hadn’t been able to see how they could use this as a training ground for any length of time in its current condition. “Find anything interesting?” he asked. He snapped pictures of the other dead. There might be someone who cared.

“Not really,” Ken replied. “Looks like any Army barracks. Lots of bunks, lockers. Not much else.”

Benny nodded. “Let’s get the other body down here. And then we’ll fire the place.”

The two guards had brought the other body down, and Benny snapped a picture of him too. Campbell, but he wasn’t sure which one. Logan, he thought. But, best to know for sure.

Ken had built up the bonfire just as he’d said. Benny snickered. Obviously, Ken believed anything worth doing was done to excess. But that was a step toward a believable fire at this old abandoned lodge.

They made short work of the rest of it. A bit of extra gasoline on the bodies below. Benny hesitated, but he went ahead and lit an additional fire down there with the bodies. The only reason for an investigation of this fire would happen was if someone filed an insurance claim. He could almost guarantee the pack would not be doing that. And then the bonfire was encouraged to move toward the lodge.

It was sweaty work, but the end result was a smoldering fire that was eating away at the lodge. Benny looked around the area. The lodge was set in a large open area. He didn’t think a fire would reach the forest around it. The forest was wet. “Anyone hear a weather forecast?” he asked.

“Storm moving in tomorrow,” Ken answered.

Benny nodded. Well, the pack could send up a team to make sure that the fire was both complete and didn’t get out of control. But for now he felt an increasing urgency to head into town. Ryder was an hour or more ahead of him. The situation in Penticton wasn’t good, and there was all of those wolves headed their way. He pulled out his phone and called Titus for an update. Heartened by that report, he called Jason.

“We’re as good as we can be,” Jason said. “Jessie’s smart.”

“She OK? I was afraid she’d get sucked into Ryder’s pain,” Bennie asked.

“Close,” Jason admitted. “But she took your suggestions literally, and we’re throwing a barbeque as we speak.”

Benny laughed. “Really?”

“She said either you knew what you talking about, or it was a hail Mary pass — my words, not hers — but either way we were going to do it. So you tell me. Did you know what you were talking about?”

Benny snorted. “Not going to admit to anything,” he said.

“Well, she asked me about Mei, and then she tried to duplicate what happened at the campground,” Jason said. “And fuck me, she’s done it, I think.”

Benny frowned, not completely following him. “What?”

“Dandelion burst,” Jason said succinctly.

Benny’s eyes widened. “Wow,” he said lamely.

Jason laughed. There was a sound in the background — a rumbling sound. “Got to go,” he said, and hung up.

Not good, Benny thought, troubled. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it so he pocketed his phone. “Let’s blow this joint,” he said. Ken rolled his eyes at the phrase and headed out. Benny gave one last glance toward the lodge behind him, and then got on his bike, a guard riding pillion behind him. He grimaced. It was going to be all over but the shouting by the time he got to Wolf’s Head.

Well, that was what he did best, he thought sourly — chronicle the shouting.

He let his wolf steer — he was faster.