14. DIRTY PAWS

 

Memories of Quedlinburg flood back, and the name of the handcuffed prisoner washes up on my tongue right away. “Daniel.”

An officer pulls Daniel to his feet and shoves him toward us. He looks pretty much the same, even if he’s out of his school uniform and dressed in simple black fatigues. His eyes are black coals on his coppery face, burning holes straight through me. I shot him with Wolf’s Bane and cured him in Germany, and since then I’ve become the central focus of his rage — the thorn in his paw. Sometimes wounds don’t heal. Sometimes they get infected. A perfect candidate for a Luparii werewolf hunter if ever there was one.

“You know him?” Marrock asks.

I nod. “Unfortunately, I do.”

Without his scarf, the scars on Daniel’s neck stand out as an obvious reminder of what happened to him in the months before our paths ever crossed. But now the wolf is gone. It doesn’t slip by Marrock’s notice.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was a Hound.”

“He is,” I answer. “Or used to be. You wanted a demonstration of Wolf’s Bane. It seems like the evidence just keeps presenting itself.”

“Cured?”

“Yeah. Not of his attitude, but he isn’t a Hound anymore.”

Daniel grins smugly.

“You killed a lot of my soldiers, Hound,” Marrock says to him, unamused by his cocky demeanor. “I suggest you think real hard about your situation here.”

Daniel spits at our feet in response, which earns him a cuff on the back of the head from the officer handling him. Unmoved, Daniel lets out a short laugh. There’s something we’re not piecing together that’s clearly a great source of amusement to him.

“You know who I am?” Marrock presses.

He shrugs. “Perro, like all the rest.”

Marrock lets out a quick laugh, only there’s no humor in it. “I head the NYPD counter-terrorism unit. I got the power to end you and whoever you’re working with, you smug bastard. No judge, no jury like the Hounds, just the executioner. You follow?”

Although Daniel doesn’t say anything, by the way he grits his jaw I can tell that the captain has his full attention now.

“What are you doing on American soil?”

“Hunting,” he replies, defiantly.

“You bring any friends along?”

“I need no compañeros.”

“So you took out the local chieftain alone? And unleashed that machine remotely?”

“Sí,” he responds, thrusting his chest out in pride. “You were like dogs coming to the dinner bell. Consider it a warning from the Luparii to choose your amigos wisely.”

He looks at me again. Ben perks up at the revelation and he lets out a growl as he steps toward the one who killed his chieftain. Daniel doesn’t so much as flinch. At this point he welcomes the fight, like a cornered animal.

“Easy,” Marrock orders through bared teeth.

A phone buzzes. Specifically, my phone on top of the bed. As my eyes lock with the captain’s, every muscle in me tenses. We lunge for it at the same time but he’s faster on the draw and snatches up the device. I’m powerless.

Daniel’s eyes glint as a cruel smile crawls across his face. “It is hunting season and the Luparii are coming for the ones you love. You will need me, perro. My freedom will come at the price of hers. Unless you no longer care for that b—”

Before he can get the last terrible word out of his mouth I lunge forward, my fist connecting with his face. The officer keeps him from falling and I grab a fistful of Daniel’s shirt, shaking him. Ben tries to put himself between us and I struggle to regain my cool. I step back, watching as Daniel tries to wipe the blood flowing from his split lip against his shoulder, still smiling as he looks at me — like he knew all along what buttons he was pushing. Marrock pulls his service revolver from its holster. It has the effect of quickly restoring order in the room.

“Henri Boguet has a message for you,” he says.

I don’t have to read the message on my phone to know now who sent me the warning about the Luparii presence here. The bigger question is: why? There’s no time to think about it. The captain extends his arm without hesitation and fires off a round squarely between Daniel’s eyes. The officer releases Daniel so that his lifeless body just folds to the floor like a house of cards. Just like that, another life is lost in this war. My rage against Daniel shifts to Marrock, but it’s futile. It’s quickly replaced by sadness. Amara appears at the door, looks at the body and stalks over to me to stand by my side.

“He was just a kid,” I say softly. “He could’ve changed. He could’ve—”

I stop myself because I know it’s a lie. In our world there’s no prison to hold someone like Daniel. The hate that he had for all of us would only have driven him up into the higher ranks of the Luparii, turning him into the most dangerous kind of killer — the one with nothing to lose. I’d like to think Daniel was bluffing about Madison, but if not, Marrock may have just cashed in the only bargaining chip I had to get her back alive.

“I thought you said you were turning me in to them,” I remind him.

It’s news to Amara, who searches my eyes, no less alarmed than she was moments ago.

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” Marrock says, holstering his weapon.

My head bobs numbly as I stare down at Daniel’s lifeless body. “I didn’t come here looking for this kind of help.”

“Can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” Ben notes matter-of-factly.

Marrock hands my phone back to me. I stare expectantly into his gruff but earnest face until he finally says, “You came here looking for help in this war. Whether you like it or not, you got yourself an ally.”