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Seeing the unfolding nightmare right in front of her eyes, Katana pulled Altair to a halt and called Jacques to come back to her.
“Right. Time for us to get practical. Erica called me this morning—Dad didn’t have a new case for me, he wanted me home. As it stands, we have two days, max, before questions start being asked. I’m fully expecting him to call me in the meantime. Erica said all the drivers are on jobs so it was perfect for making me look like I’m making my own way home—hence the timeframe.” Katana passed her phone over to Ashley. “Those red dots are new cases. We have a big problem.”
Before either Ashley or Jacques could respond, another ping chimed through the air. Ashley gasped. “There’s more red dots.”
Jacques coughed and glared at Ashley. “You’re obviously forgetting I’m not bi-pedal.”
Ashley apologised before squatting down and sharing the unfolding crisis with him. Jacques scrutinised the screen and sighed. “Any suggestions? There must be a way to kill them all without having to chase down each individual one?”
“What do you mean?” Ashley said. “Like with vampires and their sires? Kill the sire and you kill the line?”
“Yes. This is science, and Gregory is Gregory. He’d have put a contingency plan in place in case of an instance like this.”
“Why would he?” Katana said. “He’s trying to infect the entire world but what he’s not thought about is the people who pay us will also end up werewolves at some point.”
Ashley gasped. “No. No, he’s not that stupid—he’d have thought about that.” He stood up and handed Katana her phone back. “These attacks won’t be random—he’ll have keyed in specifics somewhere. The problem is figuring out what.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?
“Well, I know what he wanted us phoenix hybrids to do.”
Katana raised her eyebrows. “Well don’t keep the details to yourself.”
“He wanted the phoenix hybrids to harvest organs.” He looked down at the floor as he shuffled from foot to foot. “From children.”
Katana glared at him with such bitterness, she could have soured milk. “This is your last chance to tell us if that was you that killed the girl.”
“No,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. “I promise you, it wasn’t me. The wolf you killed is the wolf responsible, but of course, he’s not dead and we have nothing but a theory on how to kill him.”
“Right,” Jacques said, stretching his limbs out. “Then let’s focus on catching one and testing the theory. If it works, we’re golden.”
Katana frowned. “But that’s still eleven werewolves we’ve got to hunt down—in less than two days. With the travelling, let alone the hunting, it’s not physically viable. It’s impossible. We’ll struggle to catch one a day.”
“Unless we split up?” Ashley said. “If we all take one each, that’s three a day we can handle.”
“No.” Katana’s sharp voice sent a jolt right through Ashley. “I don’t hunt without Jacques, and he doesn’t hunt without me.”
Ashley grimaced. “He’s a wolf, Katana. I think he can handle himself. We all know you’re fine with your butchery swords and everything.” He waved a hand at her katana sword.
“I said no.”
“You need to break the apron strings one—”
“I SAID NO.”
Silence hung in the air. Katana glared at Ashley as he glared back at her. Jacques, feeling very much like the elephant in the room, stared at the floor, speechless for once.
“So what about going back to the lab?” Jacques said, after a few tense minutes. “Figuring out if we can kill the entire line by killing one.”
“But then that’ll kill Ashley too,” Katana said. Her phone pinged again with more new case alerts. She didn’t even bother looking at it.
Jacques, whilst ignoring her comment about Ashley, had an epiphany. A jigsaw puzzle clicked into place. “The microchips—like what us wolves have. He’d have put trackers in them. That’s our in—that’s how we do it. You’ll need Erica.”
“No,” Katana said, shaking her head. “She won’t do it. She’ll feel too guilty about helping to kill them, even if it is just giving us their locations.” Katana remembered Ashley’s words about what it felt like to turn. “And quite frankly, so would I.”
Jacques gasped. “Since when have you had a conscience about killing werewolves?”
“Since I realised they are people inside those bodies, Jacques. Not everyone gets amnesia.”
“How do you know?”
“Tell him, Ashley. Tell him what it’s like when you turn.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jacques said, snorting in disgust. “For all we know, K, he’s a part of this whole conspiracy and wanting his damn freaky counterparts running loose. Maybe he wants you to sympathise with them so in the meantime, they can deliver their virus whilst you’re playing tug of war with your heart and your head.”
“Jacques!”
“No, Katana.” He shook his head. “You’re not thinking clearly. You need to keep your defences up and be suspicious of anything and everyone until you know better.”
“Well, that means you’re on the list as well then.”
Jacques frowned. “How do you figure that? How am I a threat or a part of this sinister plan your family is cooking up?”
“I’m not saying that, Jacques. You said to be suspicious of anything and everyone until I know better. Well, until yesterday, I never would have considered the fact you would lie to me, but hey, life’s a bitch.”
Katana kicked Altair forwards into a canter and urged him over the wild landscape.
“Katana!” Jacques called after her.
She ignored him.
Jacques bolted after her, worried about what she was thinking and where she might be going. “Katana, stop!”
Altair’s chestnut hindquarters continued to bounce into the distance.
Jacques stopped, lifted his muzzle, closed his eyes, and howled. The long drawn out cry echoed around the quiet moorland.
Birds fell silent. Insects stopped buzzing. Even Ashley held his breath.
The sad bay emanating from the white wolf’s chest coated everything in such despondent emotion, the entire place felt like it had fallen into a deep depression.
When Jacques finished, he looked in the direction of which Katana had gone, his dark eyes bright and hopeful. His acute hearing picked up the faint sound of twigs snapping and leaves rustling. Then, the steady vibration of something approaching pounded through the earth, sending tingles right up through his legs.
Seconds later, Altair’s chestnut head appeared, his ears pricked forwards, his nostrils flared wide, and his legs moving so fast they were almost a blur.
As he neared, Jacques could see his head held high and his whiskey coloured eyes were gleaming with joy. Anyone could see that the horse lived for speed.
On top of his slim back sat a red-faced Katana, shouting at her steed to stop, but her shouts were fruitless wastes of breath.
Altair locked onto his target—Jacques—and lowered his head as he pushed for a final spurt of speed.
Twenty feet out, he shifted all of his weight onto his haunches and jammed on the brakes. Dirt, leaves, moss, and twigs all spun up into a cloud either side of him as he skidded across the earthy floor.
Coming to a stop right in front of Jacques, Altair’s left foreleg nudged Jacques’ ribs. The gelding lowered his head and snuffled through Jacques fur, nuzzling him with affection.
Katana jumped down and glared at Jacques with her hands on her hips. “What the hell was that?”
“That was my emergency call.”
Katana lifted her eyebrows. Shock settled across her features. “Oh. Something else you kept from me.” She snorted and turned to Altair’s side. She unhooked her katana sword and marched past Jacques, leaving Altair with him, and giving her wolf an evil stare. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”
As she turned her attention back to the way she was walking, she bumped into a solid body. “What do you want?” she said, rolling her eyes at Ashley.
“You’re being unreasonable. Whatever is going on with you two, and us two, needs to be put aside whilst we deal with the job in hand. We need to control the hybrids and control their attacks.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?”
“Well, the way I see it, we’ve got two options—we draw them somewhere, bottleneck them, and slaughter them, or we ask for help.”
“From who?”
Ashley shrugged his shoulders. “I could ask Lenore and Arald.”
Katana’s gut twisted into a tight knot. It had been so long since she’d seen her uncle Arald. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been bleeding from a fight with her father. The idea of reaching out to him with something as huge as this didn’t sit well with her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go to uncle Arald. I don’t know the details of what caused him to abandon the family to risk involving him. If we involve him, his motives may be more than helping the situation.”
Ashley frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well he and my father had a huge fight. That was the last time they spoke. If I suddenly call him up and say ‘hey, there’s a chance my dad might be up to no good,’ what do you think he’s going to do? He’s going to want revenge.”
“You don’t know your uncle very well.”
Katana narrowed her eyes. “It’s a risk I’m not taking. There’s enough going on without involving a revenge driven man.”
Ashley shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, you really don’t know—”
“Ashley, if you say that once more I’m going to kill you. Again.” When his mouth closed, Katana nodded. “Good. Before we decide who to go to for help, we need to figure out what our aim is here.”
“What do you mean?” Jacques said.
“Well from the enormity of what’s been revealed so far, there’s enough to bring down the entire organisation and put my family in prison for a very long time. Is that something we really want?”
“They’ve committed a terrible crime, K,” Jacques replied. “They need to answer for it.”
Katana closed her eyes and sighed. “This is my family, Jacques,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Without them, I’ll have nothing.”
Jacques looked at her, his brown eyes full of sympathy but edged with a tone of ‘I told you so.’
“This is what you meant, isn’t it? When you told me if I pick at this I’ll end up alone?”
The wolf nodded. “I’m sorry, Katana, I really am.”
“It’s not your fault, Jacques. You’re a victim in all of this.”
Ashley cleared his throat. “Can I offer a point of view maybe?”
“Go on,” Katana replied.
“Say you do nothing. Say we leave this alone as it is. I go home, you go home, that’s it. As the virus spreads, how are you going to feel?”
Katana pursed her lips and pondered over her answer for a good minute. “Well, I’ll feel guilty, definitely. Guilty of the fact that I knew about it but did nothing to stop it.”
“Ok. Is that something you could live with for the rest of your life?”
She shook her head. “No. Especially not as I’d have to be one of the ones going out hunting them down and killing them. It would mess with my head too much.”
“Ok, so the first step is resolved. You know you have to do something about it.”
Katana smiled at him. “Clever. Nicely done.”
“If you keep this between the family, what will happen?”
“You mean if I confront my dad?”
Ashley nodded.
“I have absolutely no idea. Knowing Dad, he’ll either do his best to convince me that it’s for the ‘greater good’ or whatever or...” dawning realisation struck her at this moment “...he’ll do nothing.”
“So you risk being stuck with guilt again and also causing a rift in the family?”
“Yes, but there’s also the flip side to this. Say I hand over my own flesh and blood to the Council, do you not think that’s going to cause some internal conflict too? Either way, I’m going to be ridden with guilt and end up falling out with my family. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
“It all depends what you can live with better. Saving thousands of innocent people or saving your own family?”
Katana gave him a small smile and sighed. What the hell was she supposed to do?