Nadia and Jack worked their way back to the castle proper just as the sun fell behind the horizon. Rufus was waiting for them when they entered the great room. He was sitting in front of a fire with a book and drinking from a Brandy glass. “I trust you had an enlightening day.”
“You have no idea,” Jack said as they entered, hand in hand. Rufus took notice and raised an eyebrow.
“I see that what Natashia has told me is true then?”
“Natashia?”
“My mother,” Nadia answered.
“If you mean that Nadia and I are mates, then yes,” Jack said.
Rufus merely nodded. “This is…unfortunate.”
“Why is that?” Jack asked. “From what I understand, some wolves can go their entire lives and never find a mate.”
Rufus set down his drink. “Jack, what do you intend to do once your wounds are healed?”
“Go back to my team.”
“And Nadia?” Rufus asked. “She would go with you?”
Jack looked at Nadia who suddenly had fear in her eyes. “I hadn’t thought of…”
“No. You hadn’t. Your kind hunt and kill her kind, Jack. Is this the future you would bring to our Nadia?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then what?” Rufus went on. “Stay here with us?”
“I don’t know. I guess I could. I hadn’t really thought that far…”
“Jack, we brought you here…we saved you from slaughter at the hands of the Lamia Humanus and their forces for one thing and one thing only. To take word of our struggles to your people in order to put an end to the wholesale slaughter of innocent lives.” Rufus stood and faced Jack. “You would throw away everything we put at stake for…what? Puppy love?”
Nadia gasped, “This is not fair! You know that the mating is much more than—”
“Silence! Know your place!” Rufus ordered.
“Now hold on just a goddamned minute,” Jack struggled to keep on his feet, as his legs were killing him but he worked his way between them. The walk through the castle and out to the woods recharged his batteries, but took a real toll on his still-healing legs. “What happened to the ‘peaceful vampire host’, huh? What’s with the orders and barking at her like she’s a slave?”
Rufus glared at Nadia then gave Jack a solemn look. “She is a slave, Mr. Thompson. Her entire family are my slaves. A gift from the lupus prosapia to me. To do with as I wish.”
Jack was aghast. “And here I thought you were just being a nice guy and all, but you’re just a modern day slaver.” Jack’s face twisted in disgust. “I should have known better than to trust a damned bloodsucker!” He raised his walking stick to knock Rufus’ head from his shoulders, but Nadia stopped him.
“Jack! No.” She held his hand back. “It’s not like you think.”
“It’s exactly as he thinks.”
“Rufus,” Nadia pleaded. “Why do you antagonize him?” Jack pushed against her to get to Rufus, but she held him easily at bay. “He can still do what you need done as my mate.”
“How?” they both asked at the same time.
“True, my family was gifted to Rufus to serve him, but he does not treat us as slaves.” Jack eased up and Rufus sighed, falling back to his chair. “Be honest with him, Rufus. He needs honesty now more than ever. His own people have manipulated him enough for three lifetimes.” Rufus looked at the two of them then ceded her point.
“Rufus treats us as his own family,” she began. “Remember when I told you that he sold off most of his holdings to help support his family?” Jack nodded at her, “That was to support us and to keep us safe and away from those who might hurt us. To prepare safe places for us to shift during the full moon, and to provide this island with safe places for us to shift and run and hunt during other times.” She waved her hand toward Rufus. “He is as much like a father to us as any of our own fathers. He is no slave owner.”
She now turned to Rufus, “And you…how could you say such things? I know you want him to take our plight to his people, but do not try to manipulate him like this. He deserves better!” She reached out and pulled Jack in tight to her. “He is my mate.”
“Or, will be soon if I have my way,” Jack added.
Rufus nodded and gave her a wave of his hand. “Go on. Please, explain to me how you two can be mated and he can go back to his people?”
Nadia paused. “He can either mate with me and then return to his people to deliver the message…and maybe return one day…”
“Or…” Jack asked.
“Or I can go with you and we do not tell them that I am wolf.”
“No!” Jack and Rufus both interjected at the same time.
“At least we can agree on something,” Jack said. He turned to Nadia and held her face in his hands. “Look, Nadia, I’ll be the first to admit that this is all going really, really fast, okay? I mean, I feel things for you that…I can’t explain. Maybe it is this fate thing you’ve been talking about, or maybe it’s just plain magic. I really don’t know. I don’t care! But I do know that I won’t do anything that puts you in any kind of danger, alright? It just ain’t going to happen.” Jack turned to Rufus. “Look, if she really is some kind of slave or indentured servant or…whatever, I’ll make a deal with you.”
Rufus looked up at Jack. “Go on.”
“I’ll take your plea to my people and I’ll give it my absolute best shot to explain to them what’s going on. Hell, I’ll even try to get my CO to agree to a sit down with you so you can explain to him what’s going on. But either way…win, lose or draw, she’s free to leave if she wants to.” Rufus started to argue, but Jack stopped him. “That’s the only way. I’ll do what you want, and I’ll give my word that I’ll give it my best shot, but I get Nadia. Free and clear. If we both want to leave afterwards, then we are free to do so. Or if she talks me into coming back here and we live happily ever after making puppies or…whatever the hell it is werewolves do, then…so be it.” Jack stuck his hand out to Rufus to shake. “Deal?”
Rufus contemplated Jack’s proposal. “How do I know that you simply won’t return to your people for a short time, ignore our plight and then tell me that you tried your best?”
“Because I’m a man of honor. I stand by my word. It’s all I have.”
Rufus stood and took Jack’s hand. “Agreed.”
Colonel Mitchell pulled the Humvee into the hangar and met Laura at the topside guard shack. “Everything go as planned?”
Laura rubbed her temples. “Yes, sir. I definitely need some sleep, though,” she responded. “We got Franklin set up in the Ritz in New Orleans, the IT Geeks did their thing, everything went smooth as warm butter,” she said. “Just, one thing, Matt. Please, if we ever need to do something like this again, let me stay behind and have somebody else supervise. I feel like I need a week’s worth of a hot shower after that one.”
“I thought you CIA types did this sort of thing all the time?”
“I haven’t been with the company in a long time, Colonel. I think I’ve grown a bit since then.”
Matt smiled at her. “Does somebody have a conscience now?”
“Just have one of the guys do it next time, okay?”
“I owe you, Laura. Next time, I’ll send one of the guys,” Mitchell said, unloading his gear from the back door of the truck. “How long did it take the Geek Squad to crack the encryption?”
“They finally smashed through it on the plane,” she replied. “His hacker name is f3rr3747ru7h, or ‘ferret for truth’, AKA Eugene Sanders. Apparently he was a minor player in the wikileaks fiasco and then went underground. How Franklin tracked this guy down, I have no clue, but it was his signature all over the algorithm.”
“Geek squad is positive?”
“Oh yeah. They used the routers on the plane and tracked an ISP embedded in the algorithm back to a series of user accounts tied to him. Most are still active, so he’s definitely our guy.”
Matt set his stuff on the hand cart and headed to the elevators. “So, if Franklin suddenly wakes up one day and remembers everything and tries to go back to Plan A?”
“He’ll call on Sanders and the whole thing gets released to the media.”
“What are the odds Franklin will check the data prior to release?” Matt asked as he entered the elevator and pushed the down button. Laura entered with him, still rubbing her eyes.
She stifled a yawn. “Honestly, sir? Knowing Franklin, he’ll be so manic that he’ll probably run with what he has, but should he actually be smart enough to check it first…well, then he’ll know that we’ll have something on him to go public with should he decide to screw with us again. Either way, we should be good to go.”
“Excellent work, XO.” He gave her a light punch in the arm. “You did good.”
“For a girl,” she said with a grin.
“For anybody, Laura.” Matt grinned back. “Unfortunately, you only have until tomorrow to catch up on your beauty rest.”
“Sir?”
“First thing tomorrow I need you putting together a team that can handle our new predator drones.”
Laura raised an eyebrow at him. She was barely off the plane and Matt already assumed they were getting them? “Are you sure, sir?”
“Head of the OC called me first thing this morning and said that Franklin called him at sunrise blathering on about how they had to get us our own satellite and predator drones. The satellite is in the works, and the drones are on the way. Everything is approved. Apparently Franklin was the only thing standing in the way the whole time.” Matt smiled.
“Sunrise? Jesus, Matt, we were barely out of his room…”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Laura. You did good.” The doors opened and he stepped out. He turned to her as she exited. “Get some rest. You deserve it.”
Laura walked back to her office and plopped down on her couch. She lay there for a moment and thought, I really should go back to my place and get a good night’s rest. I really should just go home, crawl into a soft, flannel sheeted bed and hope to sleep through my alarm clock. I should, but I can’t get up. So maybe a catnap and then I’ll do it. She rested her eyes for a moment, and fell dead asleep.
Jack stood at the window and stared out at the open sea. He was lost in thought when Nadia came into his room and wrapped her arms around him. He could smell her scent. He knew the full moon was close because his senses were so heightened. Nadia had been teaching him about how, as the full moon approached, his senses would sharpen and his energy levels would skyrocket. How his desires would increase and his temper could shorten. He felt so protective of her.
“I remember when I first saw you, I thought maybe you were a vampire,” he said softly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Your skin is so pale and your hair so light. And your eyes…I’ve never seen eyes that color before.”
“Hmm. Well, you should see me as a Halfling.” She nuzzled his neck.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you…once we mate, will you then be able to control your shift and be a Halfling?”
“Shortly thereafter.” He could feel her rubbing her face against his neck and inhaling his scent.
“So…no werewolf can shift all the way to the wolf? I mean, unless they’ve found their mate? Right?” he asked.
“True.”
“So, if I wasn’t taking the bane, I would shift into a wolf instead of a Halfling?”
“No, sweetheart,” she explained. “Created wolves can only shift into the Halfling. Even in the presence of their mate. Only the natural born can shift to the wolf.”
Jack only nodded, yet Nadia sensed a sadness to him. “What is wrong, Jack?”
He sighed and leaned his head against hers. “I feel a loss.” He shook his head, the words escaping him. “I really can’t explain it, but…I want to be a wolf. Not a Halfling like you describe, but a wolf. Like I saw you shift into.” He turned and faced her, staring into her eyes. “I want to shift with you and run through the forests together, free and unhindered. I want to be wolf with you. I can feel it inside me. It’s something I want more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.”
“Oh, Jack.” She pulled him to her and kissed him. “I wish I could give this to you, but it isn’t within my power.”
“Could anybody give this to me?” he asked.
“No,” she said softly. “It is impossible.”
Jack slowly nodded his head and pulled Nadia close to him. She rocked slowly in his arms as he held her. “If something happened to me before we were mated, is it possible you could ever find another mate? Maybe a natural born wolf?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. There is only one mate for each wolf. Some wolves go their entire lifetime and never find their mate.”
“So I guess your mom was lucky she found hers.”
“Very true.”
“Didn’t sweeten her disposition any, though, did it?” he muttered.
“Mother wasn’t always so bitter.” Nadia said. “It wasn’t until we were gifted to Rufus from the pack that she…changed.” Nadia turned toward the open door to hear if anybody was within earshot. “The pack has its own hierarchy, and our family was very well respected, very high within the ranks.”
“Okay. Go on,” Jack urged her, hoping to gain some understanding to her mother’s behavior.
“When our old pack master left and the challenge was laid out for the new pack leaders to lay claim to the head of the pack, my father was away. He was the strongest and was expected to take the reins of leadership. It was his right and he was the heir. The full moon was upon them before he could return and the rules of the pack are clear. A claim to leadership must be made and those who stake their claim must fight for the role of pack master on the eve of the full moon.” Her face was so full of sadness that Jack’s heart broke for her. “Three laid claim and the victor who became the new leader of our pack had borne a grudge against my father for many, many years. He also knew that my father would most likely kill him to take back the pack…so, he banished my family, more or less.”
“How can he banish you if you were part of the pack?” Jack asked. “It doesn’t make sense. What little I know of werewolves tells me that they protect the pack no matter what.”
“Usually, this is true, but sometimes, politics come into play,” Nadia explained. “The new pack master was acting as a surrogate for a female wolf…a blood-thirsty and ruthless woman who would stop at nothing to continue ruling the pack, even through a surrogate. She knew that father would take his rightful place and things would change, so she engineered the takeover very carefully.” Nadia turned her face to hide her eyes from him. “It nearly destroyed my father.”
“Why didn’t your father challenge the new pack master when he returned?”
Nadia sighed and shook her head. “The wheels had been set into motion before his return. For many years, we had a blood covenant with Rufus. We were familia with the vampire coven. The new pack master used the security clause to banish us, to bond us forever to Rufus.”
“What if Rufus wanted to set your family free?” Jack asked. “Could your father then challenge the pack master?”
“It would break the covenant,” she whispered. “Neither my father nor Rufus would allow the disgrace of breaking the blood covenant.”
“Where is your father now?”
“He is doing business for Rufus on the mainland, but he will return soon. The moon will force him to return.”
“All of you lock yourself in the dungeon?”
“It’s not really a dungeon,” she said. “It’s really more of a basement. But this is a castle and dungeon sounds more appropriate considering its use every month.”
“Still, it doesn’t sound very fun.”
“The entire experience isn’t much fun.”
Jack pondered a moment then asked her, “How many wolves are here on the island?”
“Twelve. Most are my family, including aunts, uncles, cousins…but there are a few who were already here as a security detail. They’re true security.”
“And all of you lock yourself in the basement for that one night?”
“Yes. It’s the one night that Rufus is truly vulnerable.”
“But it’s at night, so, he’s not really vulnerable, right? I mean, he really only needs the security during the daylight hours.” Nadia nodded. “How many vampires does Rufus have here with him?”
Nadia gave Jack a puzzling stare. “Are you milking me for information? Assessing the strengths of the castle, soldier?” she said playfully.
Jack laughed. “No. Not really. I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me. I was just wondering…”
“There are a little over two dozen vampires here, but most are women.”
“Oh, that’s right. More women to increase the chances of having kids…”
Nadia laughed again. “Perhaps if Rufus were a natural born vampire. He was created, just as you were. “But he was sort of… ‘adopted’ into a natural born family. He is considered an heir, but he’ll never truly be accepted as a natural born. Nor will he ever bear fruit.”
“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “I remember now him telling me how he got made.” Jack pointed at his head. “Not the brightest bulb and all that.”
“Rufus will forever be in a young man’s body, with a young man’s appetites. He prefers to be surrounded with many female lovers,” she said. “But enough speak of other people’s lovers. Come. Let us get you fed and get your strength up.”
“Get my strength up?”
“You did intend to mate with me, yes?” she said with a sly smile. “You will need your strength.”
The squads were in the common room listening to the cleanup crews give their spiel. For all intents and purpose, the initial training for the new members was complete, but there were still a few procedural processes that they needed to be aware of. For the veterans of the group, this was old news. Apollo and Spanky sat and drew doodles on their notepads. Donnie did his best to stay awake, but was failing miserably. Drool was threatening to escape the corner of his mouth. Hammer sat ramrod straight, eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. Dom and Popo debated that he slept with his eyes open. Finally, Dom reached over and waved a hand in front of his face and when he failed to respond, they both snickered and debated ways to screw with him. Meanwhile, the cleanup crews droned on with their procedures and the new members gave them the courtesy of trying to appear to listen, albeit with glazed looks on their faces.
After approximately thirty minutes of their monotonous droning, Tracy muttered to Lamb, “Do we really have to listen to this crap?” Lamb shrugged and yawned. Before the yawn was completed, both found themselves falling to the floor in a tumble, their chairs having been pulled from under them.
Hank Michaels stood behind them, holding the legs to their chairs in his hands, his face twisted in disgust. He dropped the chairs and walked to the front of the room.
“What’s your problem, man?” Gus asked, getting up from the floor.
“No shit, dude. Uncool, brother…” Lamb began.
“I’ve watched you newbies blow off just about everything that didn’t involve shooting or blowing something up,” Hank said through gritted teeth.
“Padre…” Apollo began.
“Don’t!” Hank warned. “This needs to be said.” Hank turned toward the cleanup crews with a wave of his hand. “These guys do ten times the work we ever do and never get one single ‘thank you’ or an iota of recognition. They are the ones who truly keep the people safe once we eliminate the threat. But you wouldn’t know that because you haven’t heard a word they’ve said, would you? Do any of you even have a clue what they actually do?”
The new squad members all looked at each other and gave shrugs or shook their heads. A few muttered to the negative.
“They’ve been addressing you for the past half hour trying to give you the details of their job in order to drill home the importance of how you do your job in order to keep people safe, and you’re all falling asleep or worse, totally ignoring them.” Hank stared them down. “You should all be ashamed of yourself.”
Hank turned and stalked away muttering to himself. Sanchez could have sworn she heard him say something about ‘romper room’ and ‘fucking toddlers’. “What’s got up his ass?” she asked.
Apollo leaned in toward her and the others, “I’ll fill you in later. For now, let’s let these guys finish up.”
The cleanup crew guys milled about for a few moments, unsure how to carry on. One glanced at his watch and then at the crowd of operators. “Umm, we’re about out of time. I, uh…well. Here it is in a nutshell. You guys are the rock stars, okay? You get to go out and blow stuff up, right? You go in the field and kill the bad guys, okay? Well, we’re the poor schmucks who have to go in behind you in the bio-suits and clean up after you.” He nudged one of the fellows next to him who held up one of the bulky suits with the re-breather attached. “These things are hot, heavy, bulky and just generally a pain in the ass to work in, especially in hot weather. But we do the stuff that has to be done.” Another cleanup crew held up some of the tools of the trade, shovels, industrial drum liners and with his foot pushed a wheeled vacuum in front of them. “When you guys splatter a monster, we have to make sure there are no biologicals left behind.”
The tech stepped forward and used his hands to emphasize his point. “Imagine vampire blood left behind where a child might accidentally be exposed? Or you splatter a zombie and the body fluids get into somebody’s well? Depending on the type of zombie, an entire family, or even a group of families could be exposed, spreading the disease exponentially.” Slowly the new squad members began to pay attention. “That’s why you train to take the head shot with the zombie infestation. Yes…it is the only way to truly stop one, but you could also throw one into a wood chipper. It’s just a whole lot messier. And the chance of spreading the disease increases a thousand fold. A field mouse gets hold of a tiny piece of tissue and voila! New infection, and a short time later, we start all over…just with a new vector.”
The tech looked at his watch again. His time was up. He sighed. Somehow he felt he failed to drive the point home. “The point is, boys and girls, don’t make a mess if you don’t have to. Don’t use a canon to swat the mosquito, okay? The less mess you make means the easier our job is and the less time we have to be exposed to the rest of the world who always asks, ‘why are there spacemen washing the Johnson’s house out?’ It’s a thankless job, but it has to be done.” With that he stepped back and simply said, “Thank you for your time.” The cleanup crews began re-crating their gear for mobilization.
The squad members were about to break up when Sanchez cornered Apollo. “Nice speech there, but what gives with Michaels? What was his little outburst about? I mean, the guy hardly says two words the whole time we train with him, then BAM! He goes off on us for nothing.” The other new members had gathered around her. They, too, were curious what his problem was.
Apollo sighed. “Yeah, I told you I’d fill you in.” He scratched at his jaw and contemplated how best to breach another man’s story. “You all know the rest of our history pretty much…I mean, what there is to know. But, the Padre? He’s sort of tough to describe. I really wish it were him telling y’all this, ‘cuz it’s his story, ya know? But, he ain’t opening up, so…I guess it’s really up to me.
“He used to be this total operator with the Jarheads. Volunteered for all these suicide missions, but always came back. He was the best of the best. Used to train operators, too. They said that you could drop his ass in the Antarctic in his skivvies with nothing but a compass and a pocket knife and two weeks later you’d find out he overthrew the dictator of some backwater third world country, and he’d be sitting on the beach drinking a mojito. If you looked in the dictionary under the word ‘badass’ his picture was right next to it.”
“Okay, we gotcha. He was the real deal,” Jacobs said, waving his hand on for Apollo to continue. “So what happened to him?”
“That’s just it, bro. Nobody knows. One day he’s volunteering to jump in the muck, he’s trained himself to be one of the world’s foremost knife and sword fighters, he’s like a one-man army…then he just comes back from a mission and tells his CO that he’s done. He can’t do it anymore. He wants to ‘conscientious objector’ out.”
“What?!” Tracy exclaimed. “Nobody goes from badass to pussy in a heartbeat.”
“Nobody said he was a pussy.” Apollo shot Gus a stern look. “Something happened. I dunno what. Maybe one too many innocents on his last mission? Too much collateral damage? Who knows? But that’s what I’m told.
“Anyway, his CO didn’t know what to do with him. He still had about sixteen months left on his last hitch, so they did the only thing they knew to do with him. They assigned him to the God Squad. He worked with a Catholic priest and a Lutheran minister for the last of his hitch and…I dunno, I guess it stuck, ‘cuz when he got out, he left and never looked back.
“Word was, he put on a robe, slapped on some sandals and a cross and went to some little border town in like Arizona or New Mexico or some shit and found an abandoned church. He just moved in and started rebuilding it with what little money he had. The locals started coming to his church, and word is he started an orphanage. Anyway, here’s where shit gets real.
“One night about four years ago, a pack of baby vamps hit this small town of his and they slaughter everybody. The Padre didn’t know that they even existed, but he knew that this gang was killing his people and he went nuts. Said that ‘God spoke to him.’ Told him to ‘Protect my flock.’ And Hank went off on the vamps. He had no weapons, but he pulled a wooden cross from the graveyard and went Mickey Mantle on them. One survivor actually said that the Padre there literally ripped the arm off of one of the vamps and beat him to death with it!”
“Oh my God…” someone muttered.
“Then he hears the orphans screaming and he knew some of them got past him and got into his church,” Apollo’s face turned solemn. “There were three of them. And they feasted on those kids before Hank could get back in to stop them. It damn near killed him losing those kids.”
“No doubt,” Mueller said, thinking of his own son back home.
“Anyway, the worst part was, one of the dead vamps fell into the town well,” Apollo said, his eyes searching the others and seeing the horror spread across their faces. “By the time the squad and the cleanup crew got there, it was too late. Hank and seven other people were all that survived from the entire town. Nearly a hundred and thirty people all gone from start to finish.”
“No wonder he snapped during the presentation,” Marshall said softly. “He lived through a nightmare.”
“When the squads arrived and the cleanup crews were trying to do their thing, Hank shows up and tells the squad leader that he’s coming back with us. The squad leader tells Hank politely to go back to his church and do whatever it is that preachers do and Hank laid him out on his ass.” Apollo smiled, rubbing his chin. “Even with all of the training, augmentation and strength enhancements, he not only held his own, but got the upper hand. When the squad leader got his feet back under him and tried to retaliate, Hank disarmed him, took his knife and put him back on his ass. Then he told him, ‘if you people hunt these monsters, then I’m coming with you.’ The other squad members were about to drop him but the squad leader ordered them to stand down. He saw the pain in his eyes…how broken he was from the attack. So we had a chat with the Colonel. They pulled his service jacket from back in the day and Hank got a ride back with us. The rest is history.”
“That must have been some squad leader,” Lamb said. “I think if it had been me, I would have painted the wall with his brains.”
“Yeah, well, when the weather changes, my jaw still hurts,” Apollo said, cracking a toothy smile. “But I don’t regret it one bit. The man is a walking Cuisinart with a blade. Give him his machete and his katana in a fight and he’s more deadly than any three people with carbines.” The others shot him shocked glances. “I once watched him slice open a vampire from nutsack to forehead with one motion. That shit is impressive.”
“Super warrior or not, I have a newfound respect for the man,” Ing said.